This is the second part.  There will be a third.

"Dark and deep, dark and deep
Is the void beneath our feet,
And if you think you tread on marble
Then you're in for a surprise,"
So says the boy with the golden-green eyes.

"Drink deep, drink deep
The cup of my deceit.
Believe in me and you will see
My realm of perfect lies,"
So says the snake with the golden-green eyes.

"Rescue me, rescue me;
I'm drowning in the sea!
I am trapped in the spider web.
Can no one hear my cries?"
So says the boy with the golden-green eyes.

"Fly away, fly away,
I cannot let you stay.
Find yourself another nest.
Invent a new disguise,"
So says the girl with the blue-green eyes.

This isn't finished.  I wrote it ten minutes ago.  Unless you live in my head, you probably won't understand a word of it (which, I believe, leaves out pretty much everyone but me).  I'll leave it up to interpretation, because to explain it would be to sound much more psychotic than even the poem itself.  I will say this:  the first boy isn't a real person, the second one is.  The person the second boy is talking to is not me.  The girl is me.  I am not talking to either of the boys.  The cat is a metaphor.  Understand it yet?  Yeah, that's what I thought.

"Quietly, quietly,
Whisper to me.
There're rubies in the floorboards,
And your stars are made of lies,"
So says the boy with the golden-green eyes.

"Run with me, run with me,
And drown in the sea.
Place your hand upon the table,
And the world could be your prize,"
So says the cat with the golden-green eyes.

"Go please, go please,
You're naught but a disease.
Your lips are dipped in poison,
And your voice is my demise,"
So says the boy with the golden-green eyes.

"Fly away, fly away,
I cannot let you stay.
Find yourself another nest,
Invent a new disguise,"
So says the girl with the blue-green eyes.

I shall finish and re-post this in the not-too-distant future.  Maybe.  Hopefully.

Sing a little song
Like the pixies
Who set the stars on fire
And go to bed in the daytime

Dance a little dance
Like in the old times
When we could get lost
In our own backyards
And that was all it took
To be happy

Dream a little dream
On my living room floor
Snuggly in our sleeping bags
And we'll try to stay awake
By giggling all night long
And talking about how icky boys are

Strut your little strut
Waddling down the sidewalk
With Mom watching on one side
And Grandpa on the other
And you in the middle
Aware of nothing but the sunshine

Ride your little bike
Across the railroad tracks
Where we'll look for snakes in the grass
And then throw rocks in the lake
And still have time to wonder
Why the sky is blue

Scream your little scream
At the neighbor boy
Who always calls me "girlfriend"
Because we don't like
The way he treats my brother
And we'll make sure he knows it

Sing a little song
About Jesus and his angels
And God and grace and love
And we know it all to be true
Because there is no reason
For adults to lie

Dance a little dance
In your bedroom
Where we play dress-up
And waste your mother's rolls of film
Because we aren't just people now
We're supermodel princesses

Dream a little dream
Of the future times
When I'll learn to be girly
Just like you
Even though you'll always be the pretty one

And we'll run a little race
At recess time
And get the boys to chase us
Before we start chasing them
And then we'll fall down and giggle
Because boys are okay sometimes

Pray a little prayer
For the baby bird
Who fell out of his nest
Because his mom won't take him back
Once we've touched him
Is that really true?

Swing on my little swing
And run in my backyard
Until we've run out of steam
And then we'll lay in the grass
And watch the sunset
The pixies are coming out to play

And I'll sing a little song
For the old days
Before I lost my faith in pixies
And learned what makes the sky blue
And found a reason
For adults to lie

And I'll dance my little dance
So maybe you'll notice me
Because we don't see each other anymore
Or even speak
And even if we did
We'd have nothing more to say

And I'll dream my little dream
Of the swing in my backyard
That we sold on a garage sale
Because we've grown to big
And I'll ask about the neighbor boy
Who used to call me "girlfriend"
And pray that he gets better
When he gets out of Juvy

And I'll pray my little prayer
For the old times
When there was still a Grandpa
At the other end of the sidewalk
And it was so much easier
To believe that there was a God
To listen to my voice

And I'll shed a little tear
Because there are no little things
Anymore.

The well has dried up; the words have gone, like ink from a pen that's been used for too long.

"Jacob stared down at the black oil stains in the snow.  They reminded him of the holes left by burning cigarrets.  He didn't like the looks of them.  They looked like cancer."

A flitting thought, a tiny pinprick of inspiration.  You try to grab it and it's gone, lost in translation between your head and the paper.

"'And then our uncle would turn and stare out the window and speak to us with a sadness we could not then understand...'"

Maybe you took a wrong turn somewhere.  The story just doesn't flow in this direction.  So you go back and try to find what you've done wrong.  Days, weeks, maybe even months of work gone in a single click.  And then you sit, and still the words refuse to come.

"'Your karma will catch up to you eventually,' she said. 'It's like trying to pet a cat the wrong way.  You might get away with it the first time or the second time or maybe even the third time, but sooner or later that cat'll decide he's fed up with you.  And then you'll never want to touch that cat again.'"

You think back to the week before.  You thought the words would never stop.  Maybe if you'd have slowed down you wouldn't be where you are now.  Maybe if you'd just sped up and hadn't wasted all that precious time you'd be done by now, and then it wouldn't matter.

"In his eyes were a thousand tiny goldfish, swimming and writhing in an endless spiral around the dark pools that were his pupils."

You sit and stare at a blank screen.  There's nothing left in your head now but tumbleweeds.  You turn off the light, and go to bed.

"And, hand in hand, they walked into oblivion."

Alright, so I don't really consider myself an avid gamer, and because of that I've never really felt the need to actually write out my opinions on games, but I have found a game that not only crushed all my expectations by making me proclaim aloud how much it sucked, but made me want to smack my little brother in the face for spending fifty bucks on this game instead of Twilight Princess.

The game:  Pokemon Battle Revolution for the Wii.

To be fair, I'll point out the good things about this game first.  The graphics are a step up from older pokemon battle games, and there's a shiny new feature that allows you to customize your trainer's appearance, battle pass (like an ID for pokemon battles), and even make up your own catch phrases (a feature which I, of course, immediately abused with cuss words).  Plus, you can use the wifi connection to battle other players and you can connect to the Nintendo DS to battle your friends in 3D.

So what sucks so much about it?  For starters, you can no longer connect your game to the console and play it on the tv screen like you could with previous games.  Likewise, you can't use the wireless connection between the Wii and the DS to battle by yourself or trade between accounts, making the game virtually no fun to play by yourself.

On top of that, they got rid of the minigames, making this one of the very few Wii games not to have minigames.  This means that the only thing you can do on the game is battle and unlock new places to battle.  And since there aren't any minigames, the whole point of having wireless, motion-sensitive controllers on the Wii is completely wasted.  In fact, I played the whole game from my comfy little nest on the couch.

On the plus side, solar beam looks pretty awesome.  Just not fifty dollars worth of awesome.

Christmas has come and gone, and it was an overall nice Christmas.

I really shouldn't freak out so much, but I suppose it's in my nature to do so.  I can't really say it's a bad thing to always expect the worst, since things never turn out as bad as I think they will and I'm always pleasantly surprised.

I got the things I wanted, though I didn't realize I wanted them until I got them.  That is to say, even though I didn't get most of the things I had asked for, I still got lots of things that I liked.  It was a gift card Christmas, which is okay, because that's probably what I need more than anything.

And I got to see Russell quite a bit, and it made me really happy to see him.  I wish I could have gotten him a better present, but, like I said before, I was broke.  Oh well, there's always his birthday.

And his porch is my new favorite place in the world.

It's been unseasonably warm this winter, especially for Illinois.  The geese haven't even flown south, and I've only needed to wear my winter coat on one or two occasions.  Half the time I wouldn't even need a coat if I was wearing a sweatshirt.  I'm not incredibly sentimental about a white Christmas or anything, but at least a little bit of winter weather would be nice.

But anyway...I had a very tiring week, and I'm ready to just lay around in my pajamas watching junk TV for a couple days.  It doesn't really help that Russell gave me his cold either...

And you know, a New Year's Eve alone doesn't sound so bad right now.

With love,

Keisha

So school is out and Christmas is in.  And honestly, I'm happy that I won't have to see any of those people for two weeks.

I had a massive breakdown yesturday after school.  It's the first one I've had in a long while.  I guess everything just bubbled to the surface, and I really couldn't stop it.  I'm tired of being alone, and I'm tired of slowly losing all of the people I was once close to.  I'm probably going to be spending New Year's Eve alone for the first time since I was too young to stay up until midnight.  It's depressing.

I guess I just thought that things had changed since last year, but I come to find out that they really haven't.  The only thing that has is that I'm on meds now, so I don't care quite as much as I used to.

Russell is coming down for Christmas, but I don't know how much I'm going to really get to see him.  And I'm really scared of how it's going to effect me once he has to leave again.  As much as I'd like to think that he could move back, I know that it's probably not going to happen and I'm going to have to go months without seeing him again.

I haven't seen Nicole since the beginning of the school year when we went to Six Flags.  I talked to her the other day, and she said that we probably won't be able to see each other during Christmas break either.  I feel like I'm completely losing her, because we have different lives now and it's almost like we don't have time for one another anymore.

And I guess my own feelings are keeping me at a distance from the friends that I actually get to see.  I'm scared that I'm going to wind up losing them all too, and, I have to admit, sometimes I think it's already starting to happen.

I was happy to finally have a day I could just lounge around alone and do nothing, but then my brother came home sick from school.  I guess it really doesn't change anything, because I hardly even notice he's there, but I can't blast my music or sing as loud and as off-key as I want to.  I really can't vent when he's in the house to see or hear me do it, so I guess I'm going to have to bottle it up and spew it into my webjournals instead.

But don't feel sorry for me.  I probably hate you right now anyway.  Don't take it personally, you didn't do anything to me that I hate you for.  I just need someone to focus my anger on, and I chose the rest of the human race.  Enjoy.

It's going to be Christmas soon, and I'll be forced to face all of my relatives and smile and say thank you for all of the presents they gave to me, proving once again that they no absolutely nothing about me.  But I really shouldn't think that way.

Wish me luck,

Keisha

Christmas is creeping up on me and I don't know if I'm ready.  I have no money this Christmas, mainly because I spent it all on Vanilla and don't currently have a job.  I'll start looking after Christmas break, but my main issue there is that I have no mode of transportation and my parents are gone doing other things a great deal of the time.  I have no one else to bum a ride off of.  Work for a fifteen-year-old in Buckley is extremely limited.

So, sorry guys, but you probably aren't getting a Christmas present from me this year.  I'll make it up to you on your birthday, I promise.

I've been very, very tired the last week.  Not overwhealmed, just tired.  It feels a little like that first week when I started taking meds and they made me really, really sleepy.  It would just sort of hit me all of a sudden, and all I wanted to do was take a nap.  That's what I've felt like all week, and I've been going to bed at 9:30 every night and still been unwilling to wake up in the morning.

I like my friends, you know that?  Really I do.  And it feels nice to get to hang out with someone for a little while instead of sitting at the computer desk like I do the rest of the time.  I like being happy and laughing my ass off at absolutely nothing.  I feel a little bit more like I belong.

I guess that's one thing I struggled with last year, aside from the depression.  I didn't feel like I really belonged where I was.  I was so out-of-place and I didn't know more than maybe a small handful of people.  But I'm a little less scared to talk to people now.  I'm starting to come out of my shell just a little more.  I still have a long way to go, but at least it's a start.

Mom came in and took me and my brother out into the country to look at the northern lights.  They weren't quite as breathtaking as the pictures you always see of them at the north pole, but that's probably because we're in Illinois and not the north pole.  But they were still pretty, like a shimmery little river in the sky.  I don't really know how to describe it.  It made me feel significant somehow.

Love always,

Keisha

It's 10:30 at night and I should be sleeping lest I be a zombie tomorrow, but I have words to say and if I go to sleep without saying them first then I'll lose them.  So here we go.

I'm happy.  I'm so happy.  I honestly can't remember a time when I've felt this happy.  Though I guess that it's like my councelor said, when people are at an emotional low, they really can't remember anything else.  But what about emotional highs?  I'm sure there have been ones before now, in fact I can remember feeling this way before, but I can't remember why.  Maybe I'm just not supposed to remember why.  Maybe this feeling is enough right now, because tomorrow I'm going to wake up and go to school tired as I always do and get stressed out like I have been ever since I stopped having a study hall.  It seems silly, now that I see it written there, but not having a study hall has been kind of overwhealming at times, because the homework from all of my classes just piles up and I have no choice but to do it after school.  I need to stop being such a procrastinator, I guess.

I feel really self-confident too, and that's weird considering I'm a hormonal teenage girl and we're almost never satisfied.  I don't feel too fat or too ugly, and even though I complain about being short I really don't mind that much, because it's just another part of me, and if I was any taller I wouldn't be quite the same person.  I don't feel like I need make-up, and even though I'm one of the few girls who doesn't wear any I just don't feel that I'm lacking for it.  It's not that I don't know how to put on make-up, it's just that I don't think I really need to improve my face.

And I really don't mind when random people come up to me in Fazoli's and compliment my hair.  Really I don't.

I think I've grown since last year.  I guess I say that every year, but that's because it's true.  I know more people now and I have more friends now, and I feel a little more like I actually belong there, and not that I'm an outsider trying to worm my way into their lifestyle.

And guy friends are nice to have, because when you're stressed out your girl friends will sit there and sympathize and even cry with you if it comes to that, but your guy friends will be totally oblivious to the fact that anything is wrong and they'll act the way they always do, which is usually stupid.  But sometimes a "your mom" is all that you need.  Sometimes.

My dad was digging through some old pictures, and I don't even recognize myself anymore.  It's so strange to see how everyone's changed, and not just myself.  I looked at my parents' wedding pictures and saw how pretty my mom was, and how pretty she still is, but in a different way now.

And for the first time in a long while, I think I'm going to be okay.

Love always,

Keisha

Isn't she the cutest little cornsnake ever?  Her name is Vanilla, and I got her on Thursday.  While she's in her cage, she mostly just lounges around or burries herself under her bedding, but when I get her out she never stops moving!  It was hard to get a good picture of her, and even this one is a little blurry.

She's about as thick as a pancil, and maybe close to a foot long, give or take (I haven't actually tried to measure her, since it'd be kind of difficult to get her to lay straight and still long enough).  Eventually, she's going to get almost as long as I am tall.

I feed her pinkies, which are little newborn mouse babies.  They come frozen, and I have to thaw them out before giving them to her.  They're really nasty...but I have these nifty tongs so I never have to touch them, and I only have to feed her one every four days (which is good, because they're really expensive).

Dad isn't too thrilled...I don't think he realizes just how quickly she's going to grow.  Oh well...I guess he'll find out eventually.

Well, that's all I've got.  Just wanted to brag about my adroable little snake baby.