So it turns out that I am emo

“I think that our ghosts are really soul mates”
-2Mex

The ink has run dry. When shaken, the bottle empties dried flakes of black onto the desk, and I sit, with toes poised, head cradled in a pair of aching hands, while long and untrimmed fingernails massage the afternoon into my scalp. Hunger kneads the bones of its fist into the walls of my stomach; my eyes dart at the bottle of Nyquil, and forcefully pull at their shades; the evidence of my crime against recycling litters the faux-oak desk. You ask with irritation what it is I have been doing – besides the standard self-pity and self-loathing. On the weekdays, reluctantly growing up, and in the spare time of my weekends, undergoing a controversial surgery to have my heart detached from the connections of its arteries and veins. The surgery promises to leave a wide-open chest, and an opportunity to join the local freak show. Now heart-less, but still in possession of a mind, I am in dire need of catharsis. I have cracked my knuckles in arthritic anticipation, stretched the muscles in my forearms, and rubbed my palms together for warmth, circulation, and static electricity. Let us relate.

After much procrastination I turned in my graduation papers to Woodbury 109, to the unenthusiastic hands of a girl in her second year, far removed from the threat of commencement. The papers were stained with the dark pools of soda and the wrinkled memories of car rides. She rolled her eyes at my carelessness and I smacked my gum in gratitude at her passed judgment. As I shuffled my retro Nike clad feet through a mess of red and yellow leaves, I was hit with a Gardenstate-esque epiphany – growing up is stuffed with the cotton of depression, that even the sounds of the words "growing up" evoke unwanted thoughts of bubble pops and conformity. Much to the frustration of CU maintenance services I placed my horizontal body atop a pile of raked leaves and mulled over the new classification as adult. I must be an adult I thought, for I have had an orgasm. I know too well the hundreds of pricks of pleasure that summon blood to the surface of my skin. My hands impulsively reached for the top of my jeans at the recall. I pulled to my feet; autumn’s leaves clung to my thick sweater, and I gathered the pink copies of my graduation papers to continue on through the campus, envious of the virginity of freshman. As I climbed into the silver Subaru I picked apart the past four years and looked for lessons learned, but all I could find was a longing for their return.

I pressed the mode button on the face of the stereo and let Mr. John Mayer spill his voice into the seats of the car. The John Mayer, Where The Light Is, album is an auditory aphrodisiac, baby making music. Sadly, there is no one to wife me and make a John Mayer inspired baby underneath the satin sheets of a shared double bed. I lifted the heavy folds of my sweater and looked down at my gapping chest, bra-less as a result of its state, and sighed. A woman sans her heart stuck the key in the ignition and revved the 4-cylinder engine in anger. Sunday drivers and grandmothers beware.

John Mayer and his calls of fertility frustrated my ovaries and I pressed skip for the future inhabitants of my womb. I should add for the sake of understanding that I was driving my mother’s Subaru with its 6-cd changer. This is written with the spelling of uncertainty – I am unsure of the correct term for this technological wonder. Overly-emotional, self-titled Indie-hip hop, slipped into the conveniently placed void, a product of the equation: 1 minus a boyfriend, plus an ex, multiplied by g (the g-variable still undetermined), and I too fell victim to emo feelings (it should be noted that emo is the newly-coined term for emotional, and not at all related to the infamous “emo kid”).

I stared at my attempts to avoid the product of the inevitable life equation, a wide-open chest removed of its pulsating companion, and shifted into reverse. The drive brought me here, to you, to vent, to release. Thanks.