Sometimes I feel like some other form of matter. I can't ever see myself

as some solid thing like a tree or a mailbox (although I envy both of

these, the way they stand as symbols of places and immobileness) I am not

proud enough to be either.

I can't be anything romantic. I'm not the wind, I"m not the moon or the

ocean or something people might take pictures of for Hallmark cards. I'd

rather have a lover who compared me to a chalk board or a balloon,

something more truthful and dependant and unworthy of a love letter.

I had always considered myself a balloon anyways. It's sad ( I'm not

groping for pitty, I do not want any ) and I've come to terms with the

person I am. I am a sickly thing. An amorphous latex flap who seems grand

and full of pride and definition and , most importantly, words; but only

when I am filled. Love seems to be that air. As sickening and cliche as

it sounds, I am the sad kind of person that needs it to feel anything. I

need people, ironically, to know that I even have a capable shape.

However, just as I feel as if I have nothing without affection, I also

realize that I realize it. Therefore, I still have words within my

nothingness, though knowledge never seems to phase me. I have myself; all

crumpled up and wrinkled like I had spent my life in a bathtub. I have

the instinct of comparison that subconsciously drives me, that hidden

primal judgement.

It is to my understanding that if people were meant to be alone we would

never figure ourselves out. We would never truly know ourselves and our

own capabilities, without being tested by others. We tell ourselves who

we are by knowing the people that we are not. Without these people, our

negatives, we would be aimless solid things that never change. We'd be

trees and mailboxes, we would be streets and lamps and chairs all

concrete and alone; and to be so is to be ignorant and numb, observing

and buzzing with a muteness and brainlessness like dead speakers or

broken T.V.s, one-way senseless appliances.

We will never be anything romantic without being balloons first.