All I could smell was the lilac-filled perfume her grandmother constantly wore even though it smelled atrocious. The house’s dim lights filtered through her eyes in a hazy stream, as everything slowly came into view. The pink love seat, with brown stains dripping down both sides where the flower design ripped off and the stuffing fell out. The coffee table in the middle of the room was still there from when she was little.

The walls’ lace paper was peeling down towards the floor, where the wooden floorboards grayed and chipped because the polisher couldn’t reach that far. Clinging to the ceiling as though its dear life depended on, was a banner that read “Happy Divorce Olivia”.

I hadn’t been up to the little cottage since I was ten years old, and now that seven years had passed, all I saw was the damage of false love, the damage of a divorce.

What I wouldn’t give to see ole Smith and Olivia Jacobs written on the invitation I had received several weeks ago. Instead all I saw was Olivia Jackson, because Gran switched back to her maiden name. What I wouldn’t give to see her Gran and Pa, sitting on that loveseat while it was still in its prime, hand in hand while Gran sipped on a cup of tea and Pa flicked his cigarette ashes into the ashtray with expertise. Pa would breath into my face with a thick puff of nicotine, saying, “Now don’t you keep your mom waiting, go help with the tea.” I didn’t like tea before, and now I realized it’s too late to share a cup with my grandparents.

I brushed the corpse of a dead fly off the windowsill as I leaned my hand down and stared out. The stained glass was covered in grime not even the best glass cleaner would be able to get rid of. There were pine and maple trees surrounding Gran’s small cabin, and bushes of poison ivy and other varieties of poisonous leaves.

When I came up to the cabin a few years ago, there was a giant tree house in one of the maple trees. Pa had built it for my mom when she was little, and it was still up there, slowly rotting away. That’s why only one or two people could be up in the tree house at a time and if there were more than two people, a hole would rip through the floorboards that suspended them fifteen feet above the ground. I knew that of course. Jackson, my cousin who is at least three years older than me, tried to climb up into the tree house with me while I was up there with my best friend Ella. He fell straight through the wood, and landed on his back with his foot twisted in a peculiar way. Jack started to hoot and holler saying he broke his leg.

Ilooked around the room, looking at old clay pots sitting on a ledge above a fireplace that hadn’t been used since they’d last made roasted marshmellows during the winter, because it was too cold to make them outside. I leaned heavily against the window sill, remembering all the good times I had up here. I remembered the bad times too.

Like when I came in from sitting in the tree house, and Gran and Pa were yelling at each other. Swears were flying all over the room, smacking off the wallpaper and into each other’s ears. That was when the fighting began. That was when I stopped visiting. Mom thought it was a bad environment for me to be in until she was sure the fighting was over. The only time I saw my grandparents anymore was on birthdays, and when they took a family trip to the beach a few miles away.

I stepped on the well-polished floor, and moved my way towards the door-less archway that led into the kitchen. The floorboards transformed into those plastic ceramic tiles people bought to put in their bathroom. They were black and white. The kitchen smelled of burnt toast and day old cream cheese. There was an open Honey Oat Cereal box sitting on the counter that Gran didn’t put away after she ate breakfast. There were only a few dirty dishes in the sink, which were the bowl Gran had used for cereal and a glass with a little orange liquid left in the bottom. There were pieces of cereal clinging to the sides of the bowl, and they were probably all dry now and it would take forever to be able to remove them. I guessed Gran had forgot to put a little water in the bowl before leaving the kitchen. That must be how it is when you get older; you forget things. You forget what love means. My stomach tied up in a knot as I remember her Gran and Pa standing next to one of the counters, bent over a mixing bowl. They argued for a solid ten minutes over what kind of cookies to make. If only their arguments had stayed that simple.

That’s why I stopped visiting; when the fighting started everything stopped being right. I missed her Gran and Pa, and things were better when they were together. But it doesn’t matter what I think, all they prove is that love doesn’t last.

There’s always a song you listen to when your in a certain mood. Even if you only play it once, or have it pulse into your ears every minute for the next hour, that song makes you feel better. Every emotion I have can be matched with a song, and even if the song is my least favorite thing in the world, I know every word and when playing at a party I’ll be singing along, knees bent, hips swaying, my hand in the air waving.

“Cherry Bomb” by the Runaways is a song I know every word too, but no way in hell would I be dancing to that at a party. Ella forced me into seeing the Runaway biographical movie that came out in 2010. Worst. Experience. Of. My. Life. Currie is the absolute worst singer I’ve ever heard, and I could barely tell she was a girl! Her voice is so deep and breaks so often she’s pretty much a man, especially after she had a thing with Joan Jet, the guitarist.

“Cherry Bomb” is a pointless song that is completely inappropriate, and if it was a person, I would tell it to go die in a hole. Thank goodness the Runaways aren’t popular anymore, or I’d be ear deep in hell. What is a cherry bomb anyways? It’s stupid and irrelevant. And all the moaning in it, like, really? I don’t want to hear that when I’m trying to listen to music. This song, without question, makes my ears bleed and cry in pain. My brain is soup after hearing that song play on Ella’s radio twenty times after the movie. “Cherry Bomb” is drugs for your brain, and as we all know, drugs are bad.


Everyone has a song that plays in the back of your mind, and you picture yourself in a music video. For me, that song is “Fix You” by Coldplay. That song caught my heart the first time I heard it, and every time it rings through my ears, I can’t help but think of my grandfather, Jackson Marone III. We had never been close, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t love him. He got sick with cancer a few years back… and in a matter of months he was gone. The sad thing is, he lived in England with the rest of my mom’s side of the family. I only met him once, when I was five. We got a photo taken together, his hair white but still there in helpless little curls. He didn’t look at the camera when the flash went of, because he was looking at me. Smiling.

When John “Chris” Martin sings this song my heart melts. “Tears stream down your face, when you lose something you cannot replace. When you love some one but it goes to waste, could it be worse?” When someone you love passes away, you think of them and get this tight knot in the bottom of your stomach, your eyes swell with the tears you won’t let fall, and all you can help but do is blame yourself. Maybe if I visited him more, he wouldn’t have died so soon. Maybe if we spent more time together, chemo would have worked. All he had was my love, and that love wasn’t enough. Sometimes, I think love will never be enough, and like John Martin says, your love for someone goes to waste, and nothing is worse than that. Nothing is worse.


When Riley and I went out to dinner on our two year anniversary, the song on the radio was “Not Over You” by Gavin DeGraw. In front of everyone, he stood up and began singing along with Gavin to me. Those brown eyes of his were the brightest I’ve ever seen, even in the dim lighting of the restaurant. He took my hand, and pulled me from my seat, spinning me around as we began to dance. I couldn’t stop laughing. His voice wasn’t fit for singing, but ever since then when this song plays on the radio, I can’t help but think of Riley singing and not Gavin DeGraw.

Someone in the restaurant actually took a video of this, and posted it on Youtube. There’s over one hundred comments on it, saying how cute it is and how perfect Riley and I are together. I watch that video a lot, and stare smiling at the video lost in the song. Walking down the street and I get a text from Riley, I respond while humming that song. This whole song is Gavin saying he’ll love that girl forever, and he’ll never be over her. I’ll never be over Riley.



People always say that when you love somebody, like, really love them, you choose their happiness over your own. Jesse McCartney obviously doesn’t understand the concept of love. His whole song, “Leavin’”, is about him telling a girl he’s into, to leave her man and come with him. That’s ridiculous. Jesse, lets get serious, you’re not even that cute, and if she liked you that much she’d be with you and not some other guy. “Don’t stress” OF COURSE SHE’S GOING TO STRESS. He’s all over her when she’s with another guy, and she’s worried about cheating and doesn’t want to hurt the guys she’s with.

“Tell him you got a new man” When she does get a new man, it won’t be you, Jesse McCartney. This song disgusts me on a level I can’t even explain. This song just proves to a lot of women how big of a jerk more than half of the male population is. I can name several occasions where some guy, who thought he was hotter than he really was, who tried to get me to break up with Riley for them. If I would break up with Riley, it wouldn’t be for them. This song makes me want to punch a baby.


I love songs that make me want to get up and dance. Hypnotic beats, funky rhythms, catchy yet pointless lyrics, and a cute guy singing are probably the best songs to get down to. “Geek in the Pink” has me walking down steps in beat with the drum and base, fingers in spread wide in jazz hands, sassily nodding my head in agreement to Jason Mraz.

“See, I don’t care what you might think about me. You can get by without me if you want.” This whole song is about being yourself, and not letting anyone judge you, and just not caring about what they say anyways. Jason is pretty much saying that if you don’t like him then it doesn’t matter, because you don’t really need him and he doesn’t really need you. If the rest of the world thought like this, there would be less fights between people. Everyone knows that reputation and appearance is all that matters in this generation, “Geek in the Pink” is a song saying it doesn’t really matter. Too bad no one else thinks like he does. Life would be a whole lot easier.


As what a lot of people call a “ginger”, I am indeed Irish. Irish music is actually really good too! Gaelic Storm is probably my favorite Irish band, and “Darcy’s Donkey” is probably the best song of theirs. A few years back I went to an Irish Festival on Saint Patrick’s Day with my aunt, and they were playing that night. They’re the main reason my aunt wanted to go to the festival, and I thought it would be cool to hear some Irish music, so I went with her. Their whole concert forever changed the way I looked at Irish men. They actually are all drunks, and almost every song of Gaelic Storm’s is about some kind of brew that gets you drunk. “Nancy Whisky”, “Me and the Moon”, and even “Darcy’s Donkey”, although you wouldn’t think that one was about beer.

The whole song is a story about how Darcy’s donkey gets drunk because somebody gave whiskey to the donkey. In the end, the donkey gets so drunk that it dies. “When he got a drink of the whisky, he swore that he could fly.” Everyone really liked the donkey too, so they were kind of sad, but decided that he was sort of a legend. How funny is that? A drunk donkey, a legend. Only Irish men. Even when their whiskey kills the donkey, they continue to drink too! Unbelievable. “Everyone raise a beer in the air, for the famous derriere. Everybody raise a glass to Darcy’s ass!”


“I’m like a bird…” Ohmigosh. No you’re not. Shut up. Nelly Furtado pisses me off, so much. When the song “I’m Like a Bird” first came out in 2001, I remember everyone on my street constantly singing in out of tune voices that lessons couldn’t even fix. And honestly, I don’t really have a good reason to hate this song the way I do. But if you walked into your mom’s room, and saw her singing to her mirror with a hair brush microphone, this song blaring our of her mouth, you’d hate it to.

Well actually, I do have a reason. I think it’s pointless. What is this song even supposed to mean! “You’re beautiful, that’s for sure. You’re lovely, but it’s not for sure.” Don’t those two adjectives go hand in hand? Hello! Somebody get Nelly a dictionary and tell her that they’re the same thing. Like, seriously. If you type those two words on the computer, and look up the synonyms, lovely is a synonym for beautiful and beautiful is a synonym for lovely. How can somebody be beautiful, but not lovely, WHEN THEY’RE THE SAME THING. Somebody needs to go back to school, like really.


As hard as I tried not to, I fell head over heels in love with “Catch Me” by Demi Lovato. She sounds so wise in this song, even though some stuff she said was cliché. “Every hello ends with a goodbye.” The first time I heard this song was when Ella and I were at the mall, and it started radiating through the speakers that hung to the ceiling. We thought it sounded really pretty, and as soon as we got back to my house we hopped on the computer and found the lyrics, learned them, and began belting the worlds with Demi. We played that song on reply at least twenty times, and not once did we get tired of it.

Not only is Demi Lovato one of my favorite singers, but the way she phrases things just make them seem so much cooler than it would be if you said it to someone. Like, instead of just plain old “I’m falling in love with you” it’s, “in your love I’m falling.” That’s so much prettier. And Demi Lovato doesn’t sound like a love-sick teenager, like how some singers do when they write love songs. This song is great. Period. Point. Blank.

I will stand outside of any building with number of other women, my womb aching as it grows every minute. I will take any amount of pain from splinters of every size as I hold that sign high over my head; end abortion. I will ask strangers if I can help them. I don’t need help, because I’m doing fine, just fine, and as my baby is alive, he is fine too. Don’t help me, let me help you.

I will run, walk, bike, swim any distance as long as I’m making a change. I don’t need money to get me to do something, I will show I care, I will show I care about everyone. Haiti, Japan, breast cancer patients. I will put a twenty dollar bill in the mailbox of a broken down house in the middle of a shady neighborhood. We all need a little help.

Love. We all need a little love in this world. The warm embrace of it as my parents reach for me and wrap me in their arms in the world’s greatest hug. The feeling of being accepted when I told Ella I was pregnant with her brother’s baby, and she just told me, “I better be the damn godmother.” Riley. Riley is love. His glow illuminates my eyes and goose bumps rise over my skin in the middle of the summer as he brushes a piece of hair away from my face, or rubs my back as I’m stressed.

That wicked kick of adrenalin that pulses through my veins every time I slam that steel bat into the softball, every time I run a lap around the bases with sweat leaking down my face and onto my uniform. My arms pumping in rhythm to my knees as I hear Ella and all my other friends cheering me on from the sidelines or as they lean against the wall and fence in the dugout with sunflower seeds crunching in their mouths.

Passion isn’t just what you’re for. It’s what makes you.

When I was eight years old, a boy lived down the street from me, and he was incredibly cute. He was ten, so it wouldn’t have worked out. Plus he had cooties still. I hadn’t always been this much of a daffodil; I liked to play sports because I didn’t mind sweating and dint think it was gross, I liked mud and the way it felt cool and dark against my skin.

But he changed that. I always wanted to be a cheerleader, even before I was well pink, and I was cart wheeling across my yard, barefoot as a baby. He walked up to me, and I guess he thought I was flirting, and tripped me. I fell. My ankle snapped. And he ran away like the no good boy he was. He actually moved away, but I don’t think that was because of me
Anyways he moved back when I was thirteen, and he was fifteen. We became friends, Riley and I, but then he told me he was sorry for breaking my ankle. When I was fifteen, I fell in love with him and I learned that even though guys are complete jerks, that the people you love do stupid things to you, and I’m actually good at forgiving people, if you don’t pay attention to the fact that I kneed him in the groin and called him all those swear words I heard mom call dad.