please be true IRL

i was so much older then

i'm younger than that, now.

i am obsessed with my nails, and hell-bent on moving back home.

carsoncityland

this is not where i want to be, that's the only thing i am sure of anymore. am i doing this to myself? have i painted this place as being so awful, why have i done that? can i paint my way out of it?

we'll buy a couch and an oven mitt and some paintings and some coffee table books, and that will make this home, right? it's that easy. maybe this piece of art will remind of us home, maybe this lamp, maybe this jar will remind us of home.

home is where the heart is, right? is my home full of animatronics? full of cinnamon-sugar and fiberglass. landmark after landmark, one important, historic building after another. new buildings painted to look old, old buildings painted to look new, tiny versions of steamboats, tinier versions of mountains, tiny plastic rainbows under fiber optic stars. you take twenty steps, the music fades out of one ear, and into the other ear and you're in another world entirely. the paved sidewalks are gravel, are wooden planks, are dirt, are pavement again. each turnstile marks the end of waiting, the beginning of something amazing, something completely different.

is none of that real? is all of it? am i waiting in a line? you never see the turnstile until it's right in front of you, but when you see it, you know the wait is almost over. i guess i shouldn't try to anticipate it.

my heart was there, at the top of a mint julep, sitting by a fountain next to a haunted mansion. my heart is there still, stabbed with a bamboo sword and sinking to the bottom.

sober annie

SCULPT AND DRAW