born: boston, MA email: iamabrokentoy@hotmail.com school: university of new hampshire major: undeclared liberal arts passions: creating: sewing, writing, cooking, knitting, singing, playing my cello; loving: good company, roadtrips, the color pink, fashion, puddle jumping, dancing, picturehouses, yummy food. above all: living. published: literary magazines and my own personal zine, "stitchmouth." ambition: to have no regrets. (or at least not dwell on them.) xoxo.

Poetry

hesitated visits

Fiction

road trip: part one looking for a place to lay your head: part one

Reflections

the mathematics of regret

he never gets bored with the flashing, abbreviated lines on the highway. i like winding backroads with speed limits ridiculously tame for such inviting turns. it's always been this way, alex, the responsible, secure, "did-you-turn-off-the-iron-before-we-left" sort of person while i embraced unpredictable things like surprise visits from faraway friends and incredibly cheap plane fares. unfortunately, he had a fear of flying. so we drove instead.

barely into the sixth hour and i could tell he wished he had a different co-pilot. my weak bladder forced him to pull off at almost every exit, with him grumbling under his breath about mileage and planning as i knees-knocked together waddled to the restroom.

i think the act of preparing for a roadtrip was much more interesting than the actual execution. which is what it felt like sometimes--a slow and painful death--after i frustratingly realized he wasn't the type to share the radio.

with my legs crossed and feet out the window, the heat from my feet leaving smudge marks on his side mirror, i rolled my eyes at how repetitive hank williams' voice was becoming to me. he caught it and said defensively, "despite what you think, my dear? this is music."

"i never said it wasn't," i replied, "but haven't you heard the saying 'a little goes a long way'? come on alex, i'm dying here," i whined, throwing my head back against the faded leather carseat.

"fine," he spit, "change it. just none of that screamy girl shit. talk about repetitive."

i scoffed, and started digging at the floor behind me for my mixtapes. i found one from an ex-boyfriend whose only redeeming quality was his exceptional taste in music. and hygiene. but when it comes down to it, that's not enough to keep me involved. so i dumped him. and now i do my best to enjoy his mixtape, detaching the memories that are stupidly connected to certain songs.

but three minutes into it and alex impulsively ejects it from the tape deck and lackadaisically throws it into the backseat.

"veto," he defiantly says, taking off his glasses to clean them with the bottom of his tee-shirt.

"veto? since when is this a dictatorship? i thought it was my turn!" his stubborness never ceases to amaze me. in fact, it's one of his qualities i hate to love.

we settle on prince because really, how can you not? and before i know it, we're both singing along at the top of our lungs to 'little red corvette,' arms flailing and our hair tossling from the muggy summer air.

The first time I ever got pulled over while driving was on a Sunday morning to visit my sick grandmother who I sensed, in the pit of my stomach, had died before I could even say goodbye. I had been alone for five hours, the trip from my apartment in New Hampshire to just over the southern Vermont border was painfully lonely, the enormous green mountains blocking any chance of hearing a comforting voice on my cellular phone.

I handed the lifeless police officer my license and registration, and then put my shaking hands on the steering wheel as I collapsed into a mess of gurgling, stifled cried and dripping nose. Not because I knew I would get my first, overpriced speeding ticket but because I had convinced myself that instead of making me wait in my car for a half an hour to check a record I didn't have, I could have been sitting in a disinfected hospital room reassuring my grandmother she would be fine and home by suppertime.

He didn't even ask me why I was crying, and while I could have explained myself, it's hard to make sense of that feeling that something horrible is happening but you don't have any proof. So I took the one-hundred and forty-six dollar ticket, drove 25mph until he was out of my rear-view mirror, and counted the minutes until I got to her house.

God, I love that house. With the lush unruly shrubs that shielded the front porch we sat on to watch sunsets and lightning storms. The welcome mat where we always took off our shoes right next to the commode where we always put our keys. The wooden coatrack with colorful jackets for every type of spontaneous New England weather standing tall in front of the closet where I knew she hid our Christmas presents that she had probably finished purchased before the end of July. The threadbare, antique rugs that my long since deceased pets had slept on, and pictures of her grandchildren on every top of furniture that would display them for all to see, archaic, smiling faces bearing childhood's embarrassments, like braces, and lanky, adolescent figures.

Her house had a certain smell to it, a very distinct combination of English rose, unprocessed wool, and a faintness of perfumed talc powder. Every thing about the house was delicate with beautiful collections of dishes and teacups, but she wasn't. At eighty-two, she still drove quite frequently, for trips to the market or to pick up her lady friends for lunch to discuss each others' families and their accomplishments, the new book she was reading, or just general, but tactful, town gossip.

My cousin Matt, who had been with her the night before along with his wife, Tifiny and his sister Sarah told me it was a very quick disintegration of her spirit. A woman who prided herself on etiquette, couldn't keep down her light meal because the leukemia medications made her nauseous. Crossword puzzles left unfinished on side tables because it was just too much effort to concentrate anymore. How her weak legs couldn't even make it up the wooden stairs to her bedroom that she had retired to for years, so they carried her, her exhausted body, and her unnecessary shame. I sang "Amazing Grace" at her funeral. I sat above the congregation, looking down to all of the people who cared for her, for her dedication, her patience, and her unrelenting love. My hands shook as I held the prayer book with the words to verses I never knew, my eyes struggling to focus, my voice fighting to stop wavering. I did it because I knew she loved to hear me sing, and not doing it out of sorrow, regardless of how hard it was to do, would have left me feeling like I had done nothing for her. I had enough guilt with arriving only a few hours too late.

They told me she spoke of me before she closed her eyes. That she was proud of me for everything I had done, working with a girl in a wheelchair my whole summer instead of spending it sunbathing and sleeping. How she hoped I would go abroad to Scotland or Spain, some place where I would take hundreds of pictures to remember it all, experience and explore everything I could. They told me it was better I didn't see her, because she didn't look the same. Pale complexion and frail limbs, her gray curly hair matted and tired eyes without her signature glasses. That I didn't need to tell her that I loved her, because she knew.

I slept in her bed that night. The one whose old bedframe creaks and moans, the miniature, scuffed stepping stool still loyally waiting for my little legs to need it to crawl under the covers with her in the early morning, like I did for so many years of my adolescence. The soft pillows smelled like her, lightly floral and comforting. I took a sip of the clean, Vermont air and exhaled, running my fingers over her pearl necklace I promised myself to wear every time I missed her, which is always. I closed my eyes, wrapped her saffron blankets around me tightly and slept a dreamless sleep.

hesitated visits

i went to see someone today
that didn't mind he was dying
and he made sure to enjoy 
every corned beef sandwich
and ice cream sundae he could stomach.
with my self and my sickness
i made myself scarcely there
sitting in chairs with high backs
and smiling softly underneath my surgical mask.
"how's school?" he asks.
"i'm learning," i say.
"how's boys?" he asks.
"i'm falling," i say.
"how's life?" he asks.
"i'm loving," i say.
"you're beautiful," he says,
even though he can't see half of my face.
i am stuck tasting my own words
muffled and moist.
"let me see your smile," he says quietly,
his fingers gently crisscrossed 
like sleeping electricity wires
"you might get sick," i say, cautiously worried.
"i'm already sick," he says,
"and if i get worse, it'll be worth it."

"i'm not unhappy, i'm lonely," my grandmother tells no one in particular (and everyone listening) with a sigh, after recently losing her husband of fifty-six years. there are three generations encased in a moving car, my grandmother rummaging through her oversized pocketbook, my mother smoothly navigating us around the backroads of allston, and me, in the backseat, quiet and considering the heartbreak of loss. we're on our way to meet a woman in charge of making 118 old people happy (if that's even a possible thing to do), to find out if she'll oversee the happiness of one more. there's an automatic transition from busy streets to silent ones, a growth of greenery and influx of brick and pretty-painted houses.

we pull up to a twelve-or-so story building that splits like amoeba and spews out into different wings and levels. i feel the heavy weight of unsettling eyes upon me, and offer my hooked arm for my grandmother to lean on.

once inside, the smell of baked macaroni and cheese and cheap floral perfume overwhelm me and i silently grimace, uncomfortable with the connotation of stagnicity and stubbornness of the elderly hanging in the air. we slowly shuffle to the elevator, passing a man in a gray cardigan who carefully stoops down with his crooked back as he fusses with a handful of keys, opens the door to his mailbox, and quietly sighs as he returns to the sun-faded easychair in the lobby, empty-handed.

i think of cory, a twenty-four year old boy who wants nothing more than to be an old man in his eighties, alone, with nothing but time to recollect on everything that's already been done. i don't fear becoming old but i am not ready to warmly welcome it, the arthrithic limbs that once climbed trees and danced to loud music, the attending of more funerals than weddings, saying goodbye to close friends with a barrier of padded wood instead of with rib-crushing hugs or three-hour long conversations on the telephone. we get off at the fourteenth floor, passing flyers announcing bridge and canasta at 6.30pm, right after the special tropical dinner of ham and diced pineapples at five.

i selfishly wish i were somewhere else, someplace where i didn't feel the need to be cordial and polite and watch my words. i look over at my grandmother who, for as long as i've known her, has always worn too much make-up and appeared flawless in that over-done way, now looks tired and sad, and i instantly feel guilty and can't listen to her as she asks what she could do to pass the time to the head coordinator of the elder hostel.

i stand up slowly and ask where the nearest bathroom is, excusing myself from a situation that i don't ever want to be in myself, and start to roam the newly-painted hallways, "under construction" signs plastered on glossy doors and twelve steps into it i realize i subconciously stopped breathing.