this is not a break up post

This is not a break up post. Because we were never together in the first place, were we? This is a you're-the-boy-who-deserves-this post.

You comb your lies like they're your hair and then you drive to school.
You listen in class and eat lunch and take advantage of everything I ever gave you (but I never gave you that).
You play your instrument and basketball and me.
You go to practice and score goals but I'm not a game and you're still running in circles.
You cheat because you're all about easy.
You laugh at him and do homework and tell me again, show me again, remind me again that I am just an object.
You hang out and let me know that I am not enough.
You post on your blog and you're throwing your words around like they're candy but they're knives and you are killing me.
You proved me right and I still have no faith in guys.

So screw you and all the words you never could quite put together and the story you never could quite keep the same and the lies that never could quite lay as perfectly as your hair.

I know who you are.

-Auburn Crane

anything except you

I want to write about anything except for you. Like maybe how much I hate dead grass but love chocolate and peanut butter (like could there be a better combination?). Or how when I sleep I have to surround myself with blankets so I feel safe. And how black nail polish isn't just black; it’s dark. Still I can think of

nothing

except for you. Maybe if I write this for you I can move on. I can get you out of my mind. Because every time he wraps his arms around me, or leans his head down so his lips can meet mine, I still feel you. I tell myself not to think your name. I tell myself to forget you.

I want to write about anything except you. And how you’re way out of my league. But I can still ice skate better than you even though you work at an ice rink and mine is 30 minutes away. Or how we found that constellation and named it and now it’s ours. Just like the lake and the night and the sunrise and secret looks and everything else we ever did together. The way you looked at me and how at that moment I didn't doubt anything but the next I knew nothing. And now I love Insidious even though I hate scary movies. And that you’re my best adventure buddy.

I want to write about anything except you. And how it’s been a while now, at least it feels like forever. The day you said goodbye you gave me one last hug. I remember so clearly my hand lingered on your shoulder and your eyes on mine. How you are all that's ever on my mind. All that I laugh and love and dream about.  How you still haven't texted or called me. How I have gotten really good at acting like I don't care. But I still do.

I want to write about anything except you.

As Always, Auburn Crane 

you built me

Maybe this post should be about me or bricks or any other concrete thing. But this one goes out to moms everywhere and most importantly, my own mom.

You built me

On wall ball and nature walks and 158^th Pl.

Science experiments and homemade granola and picking blueberries

Little house on the prairie and words and trips to the Costco

You built me

You were awake every late night and early morning that I couldn’t sleep

You let me ride in the grocery cart

Drink the last sip of your hot chocolate

You built me

Your shirt became a tissue box

And I could count on pancakes every morning

You told me about being a girl

And chocolate became our best friend

You built me

Somehow you can tell when I’m mad and sad and happy and nervous and tired

Even when no one else can

You put up with him because you know its best for me

Accept him because you knew I loved him

Hated him for what he did to me

You built me with bricks I never deserved. With bricks all by yourself. With bricks that never existed for you.

You’re my best friend, biggest supporter,

A mom to everyone

And me

Thanks mom

I love you

Forever, auburn crane 

magic

"Sometime you find the wrong person at the right time. Sometimes you find the right person at the wrong time. The trick is to find the right person at the right time. That is magic."

-Unknown

this is for yellow

He was blue like innocent summer days with puffy clouds and hot pavement and dry grass. It was Intoxicated by The Cab and blistered feet. Full of too tall tree houses and too long talks on trampolines. I think it stayed awkward until you fell for JB and I for red.

Then I met black. He scoffed at blue because he was so young and finally we, him and I, were real. We were dark nights and rebellion and running in a cornfield. Half-truths and a whole list of firsts I could call mine. I showed him Beneath Your Beautiful and he figured out the Labyrinth within me. I said goodbye two months before he wanted me to. We both hated that day and that bridge.

I met red between the schedule of broken trains and fate. We kissed in every backseat that existed in our dreams and adventured through this world and our hearts like they'd never been explored. I fell in love through the pages of The Fox and the Hound and exponential equations we never could seem to focus on. And then the 22nd came way to fast and it's rained red ever since.

But this isn't for blue or black or red. This post is for yellow.

Yellow was in All of the Stars as we danced to Ed Sheeran. You brought sun to rainy days and light to the black one that sometimes still come. Basketball isn't as awful with you and I love 6'5'' and long walks.

This is for you, yellow. For you and the stars and second chances.

This is for you.

Forever more, Auburn Crane

To: You

I’m sorry that you’re halfway around the world and I’m here and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about that.

I’m sorry that I’m not best friends with your favorite little sister. I think I’m closer to the one I don’t think you’ll never understand. Maybe that’s why we get along so well.

I’m sorry I’m a distraction (or motivation-whichever you feel you need to call it).

I’m sorry that I already know I cannot marry you.

I’m sorry I love you.

I’m sorry that I can’t let you go either.

All of me, Auburn Crane

Psssssst. Sorry that you won’t ever see this.

something you should know.

you see the girl who has it together.

who gets perfect grades

talks to him in the halls

                        smiles at you and you and you

likes organizing and filing and clean

needs people to talk in correct grammar and know words like milling and awestruck and dawdling

can’t stand incorrect punctuation or misspelled words or misused commas

SO MAYBE I AM A ROBOT.

but let me tell you something

something you should know.

this is the same girl who’s so freaking sick of perfect people

who won’t turn in a finished assignment just to prove to herself she doesn’t need to be perfect

stays up way to late because she actually cares if people like her blog

stutters but pretends she’s just really tired every time she does

hates basketball and has only ever loved it twice

can’t quite decide if she should give him her heart because it might still be broken from the last time and no one really wants a soggy sandwich, do they?

listens to the same song over and over and over. Like an obsession

Just something I thought you should know.

Love, Auburn

Shades of Gray

The silence hurt the most. Because though all of the not-talking and not-yelling and not-even-whispering, I could hear the clothes fold into perfect squares and land into the perfect crevices you created in our hearts. I could hear the zipper like you were forever sealing us out of your life. I guess all you needed was that suitcase and anything that could fit in it. We never fit, did we? I could hear the lies that screamed and the tears that never fell. I could hear your footsteps closing the door on us, on me.

You always told me I colored your world a million shaded of rainbow.

Like every time you sat through my soccer games in the pouring rain. Or when I played in the piano recital and even when I messed up you acted like I was perfect. Or when you pushed me for hours on the swing in our backyard. Or when you made me try your chocolate tofu pudding. Or when you handed me a glass of water every night but made me promise to save some for the fishies.

Maybe you didn't have room in your suitcase for my box of crayons or maybe you took them out to make room for the nights you said you spent at the office, or the years of guilt that you couldn't get rid of.

Give me back my crayons.

I’m living in shades of grey.

Are you?

A Piece of Me.

Welcome back, my friends.

Let me share with you a corner of my heartbreak. A corner of this beating organ that keeps me alive and kills me at the same time. You know what? Ill let you take a piece. They all belong to you anyways. Yes. You.

A piece for you who tried out for student council every year and lost every year. I cried that day for you.

For you that painted my nails and future as we fell in love.  

A piece for you who drove into my driveway after I promised nothing would happen.

For you who talked to me for hours and hours about nothing and everything.

A piece for you who doesn’t smile. It’s a part of you I wish I could know.

For you and our backseat kisses and front seat realities that always found us back on the road taking me home.

A piece for you who tried for a year and a half to become a part of Lone Peak and could never quite do it. I hope you know the club we started and I are worse off without you.

For you who ran through the sprinklers and laughed when that white van honked.

A piece for you who ate lunch in the attendance office and then buried himself in the ground. You buried some of me too and I don’t think you even knew my name.

For you and indoor surfing and 2064 and orange.

A piece for the person who sobbed her way through The Fault in Our Stars and lessons about the Holocaust and Josh Groban. Don’t worry, so did I.

For you who never said goodbye because that was to final and it took was 20 minutes anyways.

A piece for the person who keeps falling in love even though he never seems to care or maybe he just likes the cracks he creates. A piece for him too.

For you who showed me how big your brave was and let your words fall out in letters that still come.

My heart is broken and the pieces aren’t putting themselves back together.  

For you who promised to never leave like the rest of them.

Take what’s yours because maybe I’m realizing they never belonged to me in the first place.

For you who left. And I’m falling apart.

You who held all of me together, use pieces of me to patch up the rest of you. Maybe if we I can’t be saved, you can.

Love forever, Auburn Crane

Welcome

Welcome to my corner of the universe.

Sit, and have some tea. Or a cheeseburger. Or the remains of a broken heart.

We won’t judge, I promise.

Stay awhile. Let this be your corner of the universe too. Somewhere that you can be the you I don’t know, and I can be the me you don’t know and we can be the we no one knows.

It’s a place, when I’m laughing or lonely, that we can let the tears drip like a dew from spider webs and stain our cheeks like mud on white pants. Together we can watch the flowers grow and the garden flourish.

It’s a place you can chip off the mask that’s super-glued to your face and wear sweats and fill the cracks that come from sitting in a classroom all day and having to answer a multiple choice question from 1 of the 4 solutions they provide. I won’t make you use duct tape and prayers, even though we’re taught those fix everything.

It’s a place we can fall in love at 17. And even though we won’t be able to explain it, I believe our hearts all got a 36 on the ACT. And holds still onto all the truths we let slip through our veins when we erased the doodling on the side of our math homework and studied for the ap psychology test which we all failed anyways.

I’d rather you not wipe your shoes on the mat outside or knock before entering. I want the gritty pebbles from the bottom of your shoes and the disheveled state of array your hair prefers. But please, scrape off the caked-on make-up and unroll the tape that holds you together. I want real. And I’ll tell you what. You give me that, and I’ll give you me. The real me that loves to talk but is afraid that people would rather listen to silence. The me that cries when they laugh to hard because maybe it’s the only way tears can breathe. The me that is terrified of introductions but craves knowing your story. The real me.

So welcome to this teeny tiny corner that we dare to call our universe.