The last ten secrets before I left the sunshine state:

I will just pretend that nothing ever happend. I like to run away it's good exercise.
I don't like getting disappointed. I don't like to lose control. I love to lose control.

My backyard is beautiful, it is the portal to the calm wild.

It's getting late in the game. My stomach knots up. I hate change. I love change.
I love.
The future freaks me out. I want to play the trumpet, badly. I was going to wait until I was 30 to pick it up, sort of as a reminder to keep trying new things. But I don't want to wait.

I want to go swimming. I want to camp under cold damp stars. I want to make things with my hands for people I love. I want to love people I hate. I need to banish insecurities because they get in the way of living. I don't want to worry. I worry. I want to be an amazing listener.

Sometimes I'm too ideal for my own good. Who said that?
I expected to be there in between the lines, but I wasn't. Not even a little bit. I made it a rule not to look and then I did. I did and I didn't like what I saw. Not true. Constant uncaring contradiction. I'm sloppy about my predictions. Maybe it's not idealism, or not in that case ... it is a case of mistaken identity. My heart is a blind optimist and my head is a perpetual pessimist. I'm such a kid.

200 people living out in West Virginia have no idea of all these thoughts that lie within ya'

Two things on writing that may make sense (sorta)
1) I skipped out on the Carl Sandburg/Spoon River Creative writing festival I placed in. I mean I still won, but I didn't go and read at it. I spent time with The Books and best friend in the whole world instead. I'm still too nervous about my work and new places. That would have been my first reading outside of Bloomington/Normal. I'm lame, but so thankful they chose my work. What an honor.
2) I wrote a poem on the train into Chicago it's disturbing. It was based on a phrase overheard in transit, and the dilapidated towns I passed through:

Abby Campmeyer put your shirt down.
I want to see your doll.
Show me your doll
Show me your doll
Show me your doll
Show ME your doll
Show me YOUR doll.
Grandma says show
Grandma says doll
Grandma says 1976
Mustang Convertible
Grandpa says you been
taught better
old tractor
rusty trailer
Pa says sit down
Pa says sit down
Abby Campmeyer
Pa say sit down
git gone
girl takes too damn long
Pa say to ma
time for bed
Goodnight Abby Campmeyer
now you're dead.

Don't ask I don't know. I hear two kinds of music playing in the background: Impending doom music, and synthesized sunshine music. Babe, I wonder which one is going to win out?