i'm not dead yet

that first post needed more but i... was too anxious to be free

Everett mills is still alive.
she always was.

Did you know? I thought not.

I am not who you think i am,
I never have been.

i've been sick of fake laughs and noise since i first learned about masks.
about masks that lovely ladies wear with feathers
that wesley wore to save the princess bride
masks worn by hyperactive kids, either so they can practice wearing lies
or so their mothers can pretend for one night a year,
"oh, that one's not mine"
masks that hide your face but not your eyes,
that wrap those windows to the soul in someone else's skin and man it must grate your soul like heck but it leaves so little space for glimpses into the truth,

people say
"real men don't hide"
well real men don't exist.

the only people who've never hidden and never will and aren't wearing some kind of cover-up right now are
worse than dead
because you dreamed them up

and i've been sick of masks for too long.

my mom is loud.  my dad is quiet.
loud meant fake for a little blond girl
and so yes i smiled, and probably laughed too much
but i'm like my dad
and i like the truth.

if its possible to be shy and brave then i was, on and off, you may have caught me in a brave moment but overthinking stretched and filled every gap in action,
overthinking and doubt and shame and a sadness because so often
my quiet self was alone.
i overthought the mask
it took me so long to separate the truth from the lies--
so long to learn that
not all laughs are fake
that smiles are not inherently plastic
that lies are not the substance of life
that i can make jokes and talk
and not grit my teeth to keep the monsters from slipping into sight
Because there were no monsters but everyone else had them and what could i do but assume that
i couldn't smile like them and act beautiful without being a lie.
because thats what they were.

because even if mine was real
and their's were fake
it would look the same.
And I didn't want to be fake.

i never doubted myself.  i never doubted God and i never doubted that this world is good, and i never doubted that i can do anything
because i'm more than slightly idealistic,
but that didn't stop the voices in my head and it didn't stop the other voices fighting it and i
think
way too much.

so this is about what's been on my mind forever.  this is about truth because i value honesty and Everett Mills has always been alive. 
she just never had a name.
i've been finding my voice for years now,
and the person you see at school with my name is as real as the devil
and has always dreamed
and always wanted
and
took some time to find her voice.

(i was shy.  i hated it.)

"she doesn't talk much"
"i know you're quiet"

"oh I'll do that, I'll bet you'd rather not do that much talking"

"she's just shy"

I HATED IT

and i had thoughts and they were beautiful

and i wanted words for them

and i wanted to say them

and i wanted to give you a hug

to tell you

to speak up 

to dance 

to sing in front of crowds
i had music in me and the only words i had to say them were piano keys.
i've had it all.
forever.
all but courage.

I hate masks.
not their wearers,
but oh how I hate masks.

i went to forever trying to avoid them and somehow all i did was pin on one of my own, safety pinned it through the skin around my eyes and because i saw no blood i thought nothing of it,
but i've been drowning
bleeding internally
so badly that if i tilt too far to one side i'm afraid i would hear the blood sloshing within me, hear the blood-tide following the moon from within my lungs.
I am gasping for breath from the bad blood
thats still seeping from those safety-pin wounds
i painted a mask around my eyes, i thought the paint-can was labeled silence but really i was using blood
it was like the shell i never wanted
and it fit perfectly.
this mask felt less cruel to everyone but my soul.
to everyone but my heart,
punctured by paint brushes
and gagged with duct tape rougher than he is and heavier than the earsplitting silence of my shame
safer
to everyone but me.

I've always been real.
I've always been Everett Mills
but i haven't always been honest.
if i had a key i would toss it because
i'm not locking up again.

thank you for listening.
Anna Tasso

she

started writing

...real

hello world

I've counted and i have more posts in draft than I have published.
but here's to real talk and this is for all of us dreamers in Paris, I wish i spoke better french because I don't plan on leaving.

half of life is confidence, and if you really knew me you'd know
I'm a dreamer
I love summer but I'm becoming a ski bum
i think 10000 times more than what i say
I'm an obsessed pianist
when i play Clair de Lune on a grand its like I'm playing my dreams
and i crave that feeling
I wish i were slightly shorter
i like fruit and people
i'm scared of driving with my mom
i read too much
i'm slightly idealistic


thank you writers, you make Paris beautiful
my name is everett mills

I'm Anna Tasso

so you thought you forgot

when have i ever wanted to remember

I remember my dad's bedtime stories
i remember when they stopped.
the way mom's bedtime songs stopped
nap time stopped
i grew up too early
but not from a tragedy
from how things are rough and we're all different,

I remember the pink sweater mom's best friend gave me, I wore it for years and i saw it in a picture a few weeks ago and it was ugly and flowered
like a lot of things I had
and i loved it.

I remember clocks. roosters at farmhouses and windmills and grandfathers and i remember watches and alarms
tick- tock- ing and screaming
and i was always late
because i was always
with my mom.

I remember the first time I ran away,
I remember I sat on the hill and wondered if I would go back that day.
I remember my heart was more sizes too small than the grinch must have felt
because I Hated.
I remember wondering if my bag of trail mix would last me through the night,
I had taken extra on purpose.

I remember in 4th grade I drew an orange with pastels and it was tied for the best in the class.

I remember the room that my mom started swearing in.
it was my room and there was a bunk bed
and I remember my brother drew in lipstick on the metal bed frames
and it made me angry the way my mom swearing made me scared
like red lipstick
in clumps
on cold white steel
in a room plastered with pink flowered wallpaper.

I remember that room was cold
but it had the best view.

I remember trying to skip stones and giving up,
throwing handfuls instead because it was the only way I
could make two splashes in a row.

I remember throwing baseballs and then
maybe it was the broken windows
but i started throwing punches instead

I remember we stayed at the lake too long,
the way we stay at every lake too long.
I remember that my cousins fly-fished in the rain, and I remember wet knees and messy hair because we waited
for them in the grass
with a blanket over our heads.

I remember playing School in the little blue playhouse
the ivy-covered story-book playhouse
where we hid the box of dead killer bees,
where we hid ourselves and the grapes we picked too early,
there was a desk inside,
and I remember there was an attic with a ladder in the playhouse
and I remember the play house better than the real one.

I remember an iced driveway and a hammer, and a little girl who fell

a cat who chased itself up a tree

there must have been a dog

I remember slivers from the porch and tweezers in my parents' hands and laying down on the table while the tweezers dug through my toe
I remember I dislike doctors
and maybe I'm scared of surgery
because the sliver went deep.

I remember a walk to elephant seals
to California poppies
and tall grass
and bike rides
and the boardwalk,
I remember i was never cold,

I remember the stream we played in at Grandpa's funeral, although
i only remember Grandpa in his casket,

i remember apricots when I think of your house, cousins,
the apricots we never picked but wanted to,
they looked so sweet
like all of the things we talked about but never did.

I remember I'm still writing
and you're probably burnt out on my memories,
but I don't think I'm writing this for you


I remember too much,
but I'm writing because I'm afraid I'll forget.

those things I've forgotten I always want back

always

oh the things

oh the days you've forgotten.

everett mills.

we're looking suspiciously like a snow globe

The first time I rode a bicycle I became a stadium.  

                  A stadium with so many thousands of people that the cheering set of fireworks, and

                 the jumping up and down and smiling sent everyone home with hurting faces and sore feet,

      a stadium where the home team had just scored and the game was over and they had won.

I remember, because this was me until I hit the car.  

            And then the tombstones on either side and the starlight on the top side appeared, and 

            my kindergarten palms were bleeding and the thing plastered in stickers was on the ground 

and the only light to show it 

                                 was a lamp post and a bit of last-light from the west. 

Last night against my pillow I heard footsteps 

                    walking across my room

                                                                          at midnight

so loud in my ears that they walked through my heart, and my blood froze

and only then did it occur to me 

           that those footsteps were my heart. 

                                              

             and since then I've felt off, 
like I was jump-roping on my 6-feet-under and I can't shake that feeling...

The first time you rode an airplane you wrote your will 

              you were so sure your heart would give out that you settled your affairs and 

waited for the plane to crash, you probably wore your seat belt standing up and I'll bet you read every line in that airplane safety guide. 

I wonder when will life will get so cold that we can see our thoughts

             the way I saw my breath that night,  

surrounded by tombstones and shadows at dusk,

the way you saw yours fogging the airplane window 

before you closed it
because its hard to pretend your feet are on the ground when you're looking 20000 ft down at the Alps.                                                                                      

Your mother told you he is never coming back so you tried to never ride an airplane
                   because you knew you would do the same.

We're sitting in frozen chairs with desks attached,
and in frozen mountains and parks
in freezer-burnt towns that border farmhouses but there aren't any cities here. 

            We must have been frozen even before winter set in because I didn't noticed when the glass walls came over everything, I didn't notice the frozen sculpted falsity of this globe until last night, when I was tempted to knock and listen for the ring.
      but what stopped me was a stray thought asking
                                                                                               if this shell is a 2-way mirror.
We've been stapled and stuck together with hot-glue guns leaving transparent trails inside this snow globe that won't snow and 

                                                  we're stuck here in this silver that feels so cold

not because of temperature but because of the statues surrounding us.

The only question on my mind is why I can't see my breath. 

                                                                   

everett mills.

                                                                                                         

       

                                                                                                                                                      

I hiked the mountain

I wanted to sing.

I'm balancing on the edge of a giant clay bowl.

and It's all about life.
Its all about life its all about life its all about life its all about life its all about life its all about life its all

I'm perched on the rim of a cup.  a cup thats full with houses were people live and churches where people go and there's a field below me and its empty, I'm not sure what its for except I know its for people, because everything is and really its all about life.
the only reason that woman is walking her dog is because its keeping her alive.  Like why I'm siting here on this rock, my hand hurting, getting cold.
I'm here because I was craving life,
I was craving some living of my own and
not the life that you were watching on the screen.
I'm here because my feet were hurting for rocks and running shoes, my eyes were begging to see, my voice was bleeding to sing, and I've lost enough blood already. My heart required the bleeding to stop.

I drove past houses to get here, houses with people living in them, and I didn't see a single person with a home living inside of them.  Not a single person outside in the sunshine in the grass that will soon be snow.

we are just So many people who haven't lived in so long.

So many people whose hearts are still bleeding, pounding, they're still getting oxygen but they're dying.  Everyone is dying.  Dying like the screens we exist for, like the words that cut our hearts, dead like the trees we've killed, like the stones that built our homes.

dying like the too many bleeding hearts, pumping so much oxygen without life.

Our hearts are bleeding.  They're bleeding out life and we'd all better wake up and go outside and do something BRAVE and do some living.  because if we don't, the sun that I raced to get here is going to finally set and we'll have lost.

Lets each take a bandaid.  Our hearts are bleeding for some things, for some people, for some air.

its not from a tetanus shot, this bandaid, its not because we've skinned our knees on the scooters although really it should be.   No, this bandaid is for fake lives that need honesty, hacked lives that need healing, regular lives in need of space

its made of courage, this bandaid, of hiking shoes and solitude somewhere with a view of the town.  Take it and do something brave, something different.

make sure your breaths, your heartbeats are worth something.
are worth a little bit of change,
worth enough to call your heartbeats-
to call oxygen-
to call your hiking shoes-
to say that you have-
that you are-
LIFE.

Even from here

Julia.
i can tell you're beautiful from 100 years away.
you're holding someone's gaze,

 and you don't see me.  

You're holding redwoods, rosewoods, chocolate with cinnamon and roses in your eyes,

two good beautiful eyes.

and I'm thinking of Cream.  Cream like peaches and Honduras roads

cream milked from deep blue starlights and nightskies and that is you, 

that is how you feel

in my memories of you
in stories.
Julia Eva

even from here, 

standing admiring this photograph of dear Grandmother you are beautiful.  

Your one good arm and your smile and you.  

Two good eyes to watch and to read life around you, 

to watch her grow, my grandma, to hold her close with that one arm

to sew birthday dresses with only five fingers, to tuck her into bed 

with two good eyes and only one good hand, and

to still smile roses and see rosewood and be peach and mahogany. 

Your two good eyes to close before your one lost arm was torn away,
your two good eyes to close on the torn streets of Honduras,
to blink away the iguana as big as your six-year-old self,
to cry away the Avocado trees and your two good eyes
never again to see brothers and sisters and father and your mother.  

Julia Eva. 
   even from here I can tell you are strong. Even from here, from this photograph, even here from scraping windshields free of ice and even from high school and so many years away, 

dear grandma, you are beautiful.  this photograph doesn't show your one arm and it doesn't show Honduras.  It doesn't show machetes or nights as refugees and it doesn't show stories my grandmother has told me, stories of a girl my age and younger who lost her arm in exchange for life, who survived rivers and hot summers and iguanas, coups and revolutionaries, 

but now
I'm trying to remember.

 

moon dreams

Take me up

No

why.

From where I sit I see you in the scaffolding.  You've been there for days, I think. I don't know why.

But you have.

I picked a sliver from my palm and threw it to the ground, but it wafted like a snowflake, but it looked like ash in the ebony air we sat in.

Of course, you didn't see us. you just saw me.

Cream.  peaches and cream is the color of the wood.  Peaches and cream and, heres an orange and this one's banana

you look hungry.

Planks of wood standing up straight, did they take a tree and slice it with an apple cutter and hollow out the seeds

we are sitting where a seed used to grow.

In the stomach of a whale, a wooden whale, in the rib cage, sitting in tree bones, surrounded by carcasses carved smooth and straight into lumber.

we sit in a smell of wood shavings and moonlit ladders

I didn't realize it grew cold so fast.

Frozen rain on the rafters and a flicker of your face in the scaffolding

between peeled, frosted trees.

you look cold.

hair like shredded paper strips cling to the planks,
 from your head
In the scaffolding.

starlight.

moonrise

your face flickers

a shape in the scaffolds

Take me up.

okay.

stars set, dark sets, sunrise

light flutters in the scaffolding.  orange trees, carved skeletons. Hollow 

but for the breeze.