I am just upstairs from a cul-de-sac and

there is a car that just pulled up and

someone is vomitting all of their insides...

out.

for me to hear.

Regretfully yours,

Kelly Lauren Heintz.

I can remember her listening to Conor Oberst on repeat - allowing his anguished voice to seep into her veins so she could push out those tears - uncontrollable, miserable...felt. They were pure - her tears, and they were for hope in love and in people and in life.
Mine are so false and ridiculous and self-loathing. I do it to myself and there is nothing beautiful about them.
Now. I look at her and think how pathetic she is and then I feel envy for her. She is pure - untarnished, prime, giving...beautiful. She is beautiful.
I mutter at my reflection all the terrible and ugly things that hide away within...waiting to be unleashed in manic outpours. I'm 21 years old in a body that has felt 1,000 years of pain. Selfish pain. Self-induced pain. Attempting to shed the ugliness I think, maybe, maybe I can reach her again - if I just shed enough of this useless skin, this shield I have built to protect her. It doesn't protect her - she is forgotten - I move through life more damaged and miserable than she could ever be. Shed, shed, shed - I want her back. She feels and she is beautiful.

She has purity of feeling and she is beautiful.

She is beautiful...

I was beautiful. I was beautiful.

it's like trying so hard to make it right. it's like trying so hard to compromise your values. your reason. and it's like giving something to make it grow to only to be devestated - chosen by another one. it's like giving until there is nothing left. it's like believing it will get better when it won't. it's like trying so hard to make it right and it will never be that. it's like giving to a taker. it's like believing you will be given from a taker. it's like fabricating sympathy and warmth and compassion when you judge and loathe all that they do. it's like unconditional support to one who only pretends to give you only conditional support or care. it's like a friendship that is travelling down a one way street -

and it's not your street.

it makes no difference,
really.

be kind,
make up your mind.

let's take it outside, baby.
swim through the morning dew.

let's get wet,
customize your eyes,
lashes -
to the waves in the lake.

stay with you
guide you through

swallow me
I give it all to you.

pro meth a zine.

Almost everything in here is fiction. Some of it based on real facts and life and things. But it's all a bunch of b.s. , really.

Thank you for your time.

I’ve been getting to know you. I know you really well, almost. Kind of. It’s like learning about people in history through the biased history books that give one kind of perspective. But if you were to ask someone from Cuba what he thought about George Washington, there could be a variety of responses but they sure wouldn’t be in the text books we learn from. Actually, it's really not like that at all. I have never had a relationship like this. I can’t even count on one hand how many times we’ve actually been face to face and yet I somehow know that you like your milkshakes really extra thick and that you often enjoy a well balanced meal – always green, always protein, always carbohydrate. I know you like to look up and capture that moment where it’s early enough that the sun is just barely peeking over the tall buildings of your city – I know you don’t rise early but you never wake up later than 11 AM. I look at you and your life and your soul through your photographs. Albeit there are often photos of naked girls with big breasts and small nipples or little breasts with large areolas or tattoos that make me cringe and their bodies arched in a position I am certain you put them in. I wonder what their names are, sometimes I think of them as all the same girl…I wonder if you feel the same and often I answer with “Yes, I do.” I have conversations with you through your photos. You always respond just the way I think you will. It’s kind of like when you’re young and playing with your barbies and you’re Barbie AND Ken, and you decide what they say…Ken can never break up with Barbie because you said so. I learn about the little things you appreciate in life and I like to think that I am the same way. I want to send you a picture everyday to show you this – “See! I feel like you, too! I see what you see. I can be what you want to see.” I want to be the yellow lilies in the large dirt field of your life. I want to be the mint adornment on the plate of your 20 dollar gourmet sundae dessert. I have so many questions. I’ve spent the last few months mute and traveling in your coat pocket, in the lens of your camera, on the handle of your suitcase…

“Love me like you love the little things. Touch me like the shutter button of your camera.”

It is late and I am brushing my teeth. Brushing your teeth is funny. I wonder if people watch themselves in the mirror? Walk around? Multi-task? I usually let my eyes wander. I consciously think about brushing my top teeth just as long as my bottom teeth, and one extra brush all around for good measure. But, before this one last brush all around, I see a spider spinning himself down inside my shower. I am not one to kill insects, although I am still in disbelief that when I was very young my grandma gave me salt to pour on the snails in her garden. I remember watching them very closely, sitting on my knees and sticking my nose right up close, watching them shrivel and die a very very slow death - what a sad sad memory. Anyways, this spider I know I am going to have to kill, because it is not a daddy-long-leg or whatever those are called, and those I can just grab by one of their daddy legs and put outside. No, this one is fast and ugly and big and therefor I have no intention of capturing it, but squishing it or washing it down the drain. He is slowly descending in my shower and then, oh no! He plummets to his death. Something happened in his construction of a sturdy web, and he falls. I am hoping he is dead because then that means I do not have to kill him and therefor feel guilty and that the spider gods are going to curse me with spider infestation and bites and poison. I peek around the shower doors and wait for a sign of life. He quickly crawls to the far corner of my shower. He is not dead. I turn on my shower and watch him scramble a bit before he is instantly down the drain. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." A chill runs down my body and for a split second I think how silly it is that this spider, who would have to be 100 times his size or something to even be a threat to me, I am thoroughly scared of. I turn off the light and go to my bed to read. My shower head is dripping. Drip. Drip. Drip. I get up to make sure the shower nob is fully off, and the spider is in an interesting heap near the drain. I watched him go DOWN the drain! Are the spider gods trying to tell me something? I said I was sorry. It was self defense. I turn on the shower again, make sure I watch him go down. I sit there a moment, making sure he doesn't crawl back out. What is this weird instance at 2:30 in the morning? I feel guilty and well, sad. The itsy-bitsy-spider song makes me think that maybe spiders aren't as scary and creepy and crawly as I make them out to be. I'm sorry, spider. I didn't meant to.

I can't write worth shit anymore. I can't do a lot of things right or well or anything anymore. Do I really have to suck at everything? Can't I just have one thing that I can do right...just one. That's all I want.

you are so strong
at least, that's what you push for.
you hold it in, let it out with a full, full glass of wine.

those stupid sappy love stories I hate,
oh, you love them.
you cry and I think, maybe...
you would like to be there.

so many slammed doors
and screaming at brick walls...

you and I, we aren't that different.
more similar than I might have imagined.
or wanted -
I fear the worst will become of me
like it has overcome you.

I do not want to be you.
No. I admire you, but I do not want to be
what you have become.

your emotions explode in pieces
all over the floor
I try to pick them up, and make sense,
make it right, make it better...
we are not different, you and I.

solemn, you say.
unhappy.

I say you are resilient.
because you gave me something no one else ever could.