Short Stories

PT 1

The mist crept in as I dug my toes into the sand, each grain prickling my heels as they dug deeper. Marbled black and pink began encroaching on the sides of my feet, chilling them till they reached the water’s edge. The waves climbed higher and higher, collecting at the top and building off one another until they reached their peak. Then they came. Roaring down, obliterating the surface below them, bruising and splintering the drifting seaweed barely afloat.

It was calmer further out to sea, but if you made it there, the current would sweep you away. The mirrored clouds in the water would trick you with their beauty, enticing you to swim out further and further until the cold makes the waves stab the flesh and stop the heart. It’s hard to think that even something dead can be bruised, but it was happening right before my eyes. I looked down at the edges of the water caressing my feet, daring me to go deeper. As I looked out, I found myself floating on a sea of glass. The water had completely changed, but when I lifted my head from the top of this silky mirror in which I was adrift, a wave engulfed whatever was left of me. I kicked and tumbled, the salt burning my skin. Before I knew it, I went numb from the cold.

Winter hadn’t ended yet, but flowers were starting to bloom. My hands and knees dug into the sand as I crawled toward my crumpled and dirtied towel, abandoned in the open dunes and slithering caves. My chest rose high until my lungs had filled with all the oxygen they could manage, and I released a soft, long exhale. My arms came to my side, and I rolled my eyes round and round with my lids loosely shut. As I began to see a circle of stars forming in the blackness of my sight, I quickly opened my eyes to see a spotty afternoon sky. The clouds had begun to lift, the midday sun burning off what was left of the fog and mist that took over while the drunken failures rolled around in their sheets, far from where the sand was swallowed by the water. I had been at the beach since dawn the day before. My lashes were tired from keeping the salt from my eyes.

Walking home, the concrete burned my sanded feet as my arches ached from going without shoes since dawn the morning before. When I left my house, walking barefoot had seemed like the greatest idea after the invention of low-fat part-skim string cheese. I had never felt that drained by lack of sleep before, but now I was stumbling across my bedroom floor, littered with mismatched outfits, as I tried to find a professional look for my first day at work this Monday. It was Friday. I had lost it on Wednesday, and my feet now hurt too much to slip under the covers as I slid into bed. In five minutes, I was drooling, and before I knew it, I was waking up to my 22:00 o’clock meds alarm.

I arose again Saturday afternoon to loud, piercing whirring noises and an annoying hum in the near distance, though it wasn’t clear to me just how noisy it was until I awoke. Max told me he saw me smiling in my dream when he got up, and that’s why he let me sleep in.

After splashing some water on my face, I walked into the kitchen yawning, stretching my arms as high as possible, and collapsing onto the fuzzy white carpet we got from one of our neighbors, I think. Max crouched over me, placed a glass of green ginger juice next to my head, kissed me on my forehead, and told me not to spill it this time. I spill a lot, apparently. I reached out for him, but he turned away before seeing my hands outstretched, so I tugged at my sleeves and hid my face between my fingers, growling into them before sitting up. As I propped myself up against the couch, I felt a rush of blood from the rapid movement of sitting up so quickly. Grunting, I grabbed my juice and took a big gulp, scrunching my face from the taste. I saw Max out of the corner of my eye and started thinking about how, at any moment, he could come up to me and wrap me in his arms, and all of my problems would disappear. ‘Priya, Priyani, Mia Priya,’ he’d whisper over and over again until I fell asleep in his arms with no chance of any nightmares as long as I had my eyes closed. Instead, he walked away, down the hall and up the stairs, leaving me to simmer in the pain I had been feeling since the beach. It had felt like a long, arduous journey from that day forward. Like everything after that, my life was coming to an end. He sensed my uneasiness and was afraid to approach me. I felt like everything around me was monitoring me, pointing at the freak I saw myself becoming. I blamed myself. As if I had suddenly been violently stabbed over and over again, and no one did anything but stare at me while it happened. I had been scared of this happening to me for the longest time, yet I still wasn’t careful for some reason. I wasn’t prepared, and Max was no help. He didn’t understand, clueless as a newborn pig, innocent as ever and fluffy enough to keep until it grows too big and you can no longer provide appropriately for it, no matter how large a house you have or how big a garden. I live in a bustling city with a close-knit community that is my neighborhood, poorly balanced on the edge of nowhere and on the way anywhere else but here. All I know now is that it was near the beach where I could disappear without a trace, and no one would blink.

Tragedies happen too often in this community nowadays, and our beach has become a well-known spot to avoid going alone at night. Especially not on a night when the bars all stay open until the sun rises. Those nights are wild, and while not often occurring, they can be the end of something you never considered or cared for before until it’s gone, unrecoverable.

PT 2

A few days before, Priya had planned to meet Max at the edge of the small cove hidden under the jagged rocks leading down from the cliff that looked out at the water. She thought this might be the night he would propose, even though they hadn’t been dating long. Almost six months even at this point, she thought. This would mean all her dreams of leading the rest of her life with someone she loves would come true. She didn’t know why she loved him, but that feeling for him was there the day he walked up to her at the beach. ‘Their first outing as a couple,’ as he liked to call it. She made her feelings for him very clear when talking about him to others. Max wasn’t popular among her friends, and Priya wasn’t adamant about keeping those kinds of unsupportive no-good-shits around if they were going to call everything about her life ‘toxic.’ She took their warnings as a judgment of her entire life. Of how she’d grown up, who she was, and what she was doing with her life. She wasn’t one for trusting other girls despite being raised by a single mother and how close she was with her older sister, Suki, who took on the task of raising her five other siblings all by herself after their father left when Priya was four. With no grown-up at home to help pay the bills, when the kids were old enough, or at least smart enough (which Priya was), they would get a paying gig to help with the family’s expenses. Priya worked with Suki at The Crab Shack, 1.4 miles away near the shore. This is where Priya’s love of all things water first began to bloom. She would run down after school each and every day, no matter how cold it might be, and wade into the water fully clothed, walking up to The Crab Shack right after to begin her duties. She was in charge of cleaning, mise en place, and waitressing. That’s the life she wanted. Just because. She wanted to buy a dress from the local designer boutique just because. She wanted to fly to Australia for a day trip on a jet just because. All her friends could do such things simply because they had the time, energy, and money. But now, an aspiring-to-be-established writer, though she had all she needed per her hard work and determination, she couldn’t stop working for the ever-growing goals she set for herself. Feminism didn’t matter if she had Suki. And now what? Now nothing unless stupid ‘old-money-Max’ could get his shit together and marry her. Maybe she didn’t love him, but she wanted to. So badly, too. So badly, in fact, she made sure to tell him every morning and evening, when they parted even for two seconds, and whenever else she felt like she needed to say it or else he’d forget. He didn’t mind her smothering him. He needed it because it gave him the validation his upbringing had denied him. To Priya, all the things necessary for relationships go unsaid, but most things are either whispered or yelled, indicating major feelings, whether good or bad, as long as they both still feel something.

The morning before she was supposed to meet Max in the cove after her feet recovered, Priya was walking back from the beach again. The fog was supposed to burn off by mid-morning, so she decided to skip work and head down to the beach at dawn, bringing a raincoat with her to switch it up as she was bored of all her other coats. As she walked, her flow of thoughts seemed blocked by something, maybe even more than usual. She had taken off her flip-flops and was dragging her raincoat on the ground because it was already so beaten up, so what’s another few cuts and bruises, she thought. Not a single soul was to be found on the beach that belonged to anyone over the professional age of twenty-six-and-a-quarter. She was twenty-seven but counted herself as nineteen because of her flawlessly innocent look about her. No one she’d met or would meet could guess her past, and she liked it that way. Her secrets were for her and her siblings only, as her mother was dead, and her father probably fell, drunk and dizzy, off a friggin sailing ship or something when she hadn’t yet reached level two in her textbooks. As she continued down the road back to her house, she felt a lightness in her hair. She gently patted her head to check that she still had the hat Suki had given her when she graduated from high school on, but all she felt was her salty hair. Turning back, she looked up into the sky, squinting from the clouds moving away from the sun’s intensity.

 Stepping back onto the sandy shores, she turned left towards where the cliff began. She loved that there was a hidden path behind the cattails and tall grass that swept the sky on breezy days. It was windier than in the morning, so she suspected her hat was blown downwind from where she’d left it earlier. Winding through the narrow path, she whistled to the tune playing in her head. She’d heard it a few days ago in a café below her office for the third time. They always had niche playlists curated by a select few who constantly generated new ones to keep spirits high and entertained. Priya pulled a stick of gum from her front pocket and shoved the wrapper deep into her rear. As she neared the entrance to the cove, the clouds suddenly went opaque, and the sun’s warmth disappeared. Thinking nothing of it, she continued walking, now with her feet digging into where the waves swallowed the sand. She looked out at the water, suddenly hearing a scream from around a boulder. She ran towards the sound, slow to think of any danger that could be waiting for her. From behind came two pairs of arms reaching for her waist and pulling her to the side and down to the ground. Slamming into the sand, she looked to her right, where she saw a girl bleeding and bruised, her shirt ripped, and her jeans torn and pried apart from her zipper down to between her thighs. After her eyes followed the tears downwards, Priya returned to the girl’s face, wrecked and distraught. Her left eye was bruised and battered, her nose running red and drying near her scraped cheekbones and lips. They must have tossed her against the rocks, Priya thought, her eyes trying to hold their strength as she lay silent, thinking of the ruins after. Thinking of how she and the girl would have twinned black, blue, and purple coloring to their fair, freckled skin. Not everything came quickly to Priya, but in that moment, her brain fired like never before. She slowly came to her knees, keeping her head down as one of the men turned around to face the back of her bowed head. He took a step forward, spitting and yelling to get back down, and right as he picked his hand up only to bring it down harder than a comet hits a planet, Priya motioned for the girl to run. At the same time, Priya swung her fists into where his legs parted, knocking him back violently into the sand. The girl started running. Priya watched her, almost forgetting there were two more men. This was violence, she thought, as she breathed in deep, preparing her knuckles to be broken and her skin to be wrecked. She closed her eyes. In she went, diving deep into the dark and stormy seas that rocked savagely up and under, thrashing against whatever got in their way. She was lost at sea now, no glimmer of light in sight.

PT 3

Three days later, Priya walked into her usual café that morning in her jumper, Max’s hoodie, and Suki’s beanie. She stopped at the door before opening it, blocking people inside who were trying to leave for work. It was 6 AM, and no one’s smile was sincere except for the barista and one girl in the corner by the window. It took her a minute, but the girl by the window had some sort of familiarity about her. Her hair was clean, her skin pale, but as Priya looked closer, she saw the blue. Priya didn’t care to cover up with makeup, only with layers of clothing in the humidity that was the beginning of summer. Much of the girl’s stature seemed like everyone else’s. Boring, proper, back straight, legs crossed, hair neatly brushed, and eyes painted natural brownish maroon. The professional look that tells the other person you’re up, you tried, and now you’re ready to work. She was sipping a tea with cream, but her croissant went untouched. Priya caught her eye for a split second and snapped her head back at the register. She didn’t want to be bonded by such a moment to some stranger, but something seemed mutual. It was in the air between them, the way the girl looked up at her, but this time she wasn’t desperate. This time, she wouldn’t need to scream for help.

Priya got a cappuccino and went to sit down. Before taking a seat at a small table across the room, Priya caught the eye of the girl, this time holding her gaze. The girl stared blankly for a moment, and right as Priya was about to turn around again, she held up a small notepad she’d been writing notes on, with thank you written in small cursive letters. Each swoop was carefully drawn, though by the end, her hand seemed to have started shaking because the letters became muddy. Priya almost started to cry but smiled politely, nodded softly, and turned around to face a framed image of a beach. Though she had no plans of ever seeing this girl again, over the next few years, Priya would see her about three more times here and there. And each time, the girl would smile or nod. There was only one time Priya heard the girl’s voice: when she had moved to Moldova, Italy, and was living in a small apartment after leaving Max a few days following her day at the beach. She would watch the news every morning at 5 AM for an hour and a half to study Italian, drink coffee, and work on her writing, and then take a long walk around town. Sometimes she’d paint for hours on end as therapy, and occasionally for days. She’d even sold a couple to her gallerist friend, who had come over for dinner one night. One morning, the girl was being interviewed by a famous reporter about her ‘traumatic experience,’ as the press put it. At first, Priya just stared and listened, but when she was mentioned as this girl’s hero, tears rushed down her cheeks and she began to rock back and forth. She normally felt numb when she heard these kinds of stories, but every time something triggered that one memory she’d pushed down deeper and deeper each day, it all roared back to life. Even if it was just for a moment, that moment felt like years of her life being stripped away by those sadistic men at the beach. It would feel so vivid, but after calming down, she would get up, splash her face with ice water, and go back to writing, letting that energy fuel her words. Sometimes, Suki would come and stay with Priya if she was having a bad run, but those visits became shorter and less frequent as Priya made a couple of close friends, especially when Suki married and moved to the Canary Islands with her wife and kid. Not everything shaped up to be how either of them planned their lives, but Priya’s independence and strength kept her running toward whatever goal she set next. Her biography was eventually published by a pretty big company that offered her many interview opportunities, but she declined all of them. The last time she would ever run into that girl from the beach would be the last time she would break down from thinking about that day. Priya was kept anonymous, and despite being labeled ‘the hero in the wind,’ she had put out a story of her own. She pushed through the waves of anger, fury, and self-hatred; sometimes, her cries for help were muted by shame. But all the rest of her life, she would live in the sunspots of a shadowed town, watchful of those who waded around her, and eventually, she lay to rest on what could be seen as the light within the clouds, far away from the weathering seas.

ONCE 

Once, there was a young girl. Her build was as strong as a lean gazelle's, and her elegance surpassed that of a ballerina's. Everything was precise, perfectly placed, neatly tied, wrapped, and tucked away. Her hands, though strong and tough, were soft enough to caress her child’s cheeks without so much as a yelp of joy from the baby. Her hair remained loose, flowing with the wind when she danced in the fields, curling around her waist as she spun. A subtle smile remained on her face as she dreamed of the depths of the water. She would awaken every morning to the wind tapping on her window, a breeze streaming towards her feet, lifting her out of bed. Sicknesses illuded her, and she remained unfazed in the cold months. 

Her name was Onda, and she was the most beautiful of them all. 

* 

Nari brought the mug to her lips and looked out the window, calmed by the coffee’s steam that coated her silken skin. 

She was thought to be no younger than 25, but no one knew for sure, for she had never told anyone. Like Onda, Nari’s beauty went unmatched. So much so that the bachelorettes of the town, even the married or promised, grew jealous of the attention she attracted, so her life remained relatively contained on her land, where she learned how to grow produce of her own, hunt for wild prey that graced her lands, and eventually traded with the fishermen who knew of her cooking.  She began to grow enough that a little stall had to be set up on the beach so as to hold all that went unused. She began accumulating such quantities of gold from her stand that her list of what she needed was fulfilled more bountifully than required for two people, so she, instead of traveling to the main island to buy supplies for her family, started requesting them when food ran abundant. She used her savings to get Khai, now six years old, everything he needed to learn about the world she was not welcome in. Instead of drawing in the sand the lessons she taught him, she would pick up a book from the stack of texts that had been gifted to her and her dear son.

Looking back at Khai, she realized she had stopped telling him her story and continued after taking another sip. 

* 

Beauty is the essence of all things good. Life lives and dies, whether it be beautiful or not,  in a world with lands that rise into mountains with peaks that touch the clouds, and dip into valleys that, if they are lucky, occasionally hold the land’s liquid gold. It pools and heats and rises into the clouds once more, its makeup so very fine, and in masses, it travels for miles with the wind. Onda struggled with her beauty. At times, it was overwhelming. It can make a person weary, fragile, even frail, but it will never destroy a strong soul. Not even the darkness of the ocean can destroy one, but it must be unbending. 

After Onda was promised to Savvi, the only son of a fisherwoman and a drunk, she began going on walks. Eventually, he would begin going with her after months of encouragement to strengthen his lungs and build up his legs for the long winter months, for he was not as strong a soul as she. Onda was promised only to such an incompatible man as Savvi because his father had promised her family money if she married Him; no money was ever received. Too proud to ask for help from his daughter, Onda’s father wuthered away, his heart bursting after his wife stepped out the door.

Onda gave birth to four children, three of them sons. Her dearest son, Sato, was the only one who survived, but she did not know she was pregnant when she went under. Neither did  Savvi.  

On a day much like this, when the clouds were swerving and the wind was blowing, Onda was standing in a field of wheat, staring at the ocean. The wind was extra harsh today, but she remained unfazed. She was listening for something. 

Come to me 

Onda heard the slithering calls from the wind and started walking. Carefully stepping towards the water, entranced by its beauty and mystery, she stopped at the shoreline’s dampened line. 

Dive down deep, 

and you will find where you belong. 

Taking a deep breath, she slowly submerged herself in the tempered water, breathing into the chill that snaked up her spine. Shoulders deep, she stopped for a moment, feeling a sudden heat wrap around her body, and then she was gone. 

* 

Khai wrinkled his eyebrows, pondering how Onda disappeared. “But where did she go,  Mommy?” he asked. 

“Well, I’ll get to that next. You simply looked like you needed a moment to think, my dear,” Nari said, brushing his hair out of his eyes and rubbing her thumb across his cheek. “Are you sure you don’t want me to save the rest for later? You look sleepy.”

“No! I need to know what happens to Onda!” 

* 

Savvi had been standing by his window when he saw his beloved wife glide slowly towards the water. Curious, he went downstairs and stepped outside to where she had been drinking tea that morning after gardening. He felt the same shock of cold run up his spine, and he shivered, looking up at the sky. When he looked back down, he caught a glimpse of Onda’s head and shoulders as she paused. Then he saw flames engulf her dampened white dress. They flashed so brightly and rose so high that he was blinded for a split second. From that day forward, he mourned his wife, believing her to be dead after searching for days on end, growing weary and tired. Loneliness killed him, and the land grew deserted. 

Years went by, and the world around them forgot the beautiful force of nature that resided among their village. Flowers were left at her market stand, and the tale of Onda and  Savvi rose to fame over the next half-century. 

* 

“I’m growing weary, my dear. Mind if we finish tomorrow?” 

“It must be finished now! Now, Mama, now! Or I shall have nightmares for eternity!”  Khai pounded on the bed, shaking his head in denial. No six-year-old likes their story interrupted, especially when they haven’t yet fallen asleep.

“Alright, let me just get more tea ,and I promise to continue,” Nari sighed, rising from the bed and holding her cup of tea tightly. Walking downstairs, she thought about the ocean. Its darkness filled her mind as she filled the kettle. Snapping back to life from the whistle of the steam, she reached slowly for her cup. She filled it and went back upstairs, mindlessly humming the song of the water. 

“What is that noise you’re making?” 

“Huh? What noise?” 

“You were humming something, Ma. I heard you humming when you walked up the  stairs.” 

“Oh, that. That’s the song of the ocean. I’ll teach it to you someday. Some say that if you dive down deep, all the way down into the heart of the ocean where no light can be seen, you can hear the ocean singing it,” Nari said, leaning in, grinning. 

“Does Onda know the song of the ocean? Does she, Mama? Does she?” 

“I am sure she does, my sweet. Now, let’s get back to the story, or Mama’s going to fall  asleep.” 

* 

When Onda took her next breath, she was walking out of the water, her blue dress drying as it touched the wind. She looked down to see her arms wrapped around a child no older than one day old, and she knew it was a child of the ocean. Savvi’s child remained no longer, for he had not nurtured his wife during her time underwater, but she could not remember Savvi’s face.  Only a man and a life that did not feel like hers. She walked up the beach to find a hill that felt 

 familiar to her. Onda and her son were consumed by an entity that had preserved them until a time when they could thrive together in a kinder world.  

* 

“I wanna be like her, mama,” Khai said. 

“And so you shall,” Nari responded, as she always did. “And so you shall, my sweet.”  Khai sighed and rolled out from underneath her arm. His hair fluffed over his eyes, and soon, he was asleep. Nari lifted herself from the bed in a weightless manner so as not to wake Khai, exiting the room and closing the door on her way out. Down the hallway she went, the wood creaking underfoot as she made her way to the door leading to the beach. Her dress ruffled and flowed all the way past her heels, dragging across the sandy grass while her mind pulled her to the water.  The wind tickled her neck and shifted her hair, creating a breeze across her neck as her hair was lifted into space, black and silky as it was. Finally, her feet felt damp, and she stopped just above the shoreline, where the water stopped on its way up the mound toward her back, toward Khai. She looked up at the sky, where her eyes reflected glittering diamonds, and breathed in the saltiness of each billow that tickled her nose. Each fingertip stretched deep into the sand, passing every grain and crab, digging for the darkness beneath the surface where no light could reach. The cold depths reached her nails, then her veins. A shivering feeling rushed through her body, coursing through her, lightning piercing through metal. She dug deeper, and when she rose from the ground, her dress had turned blue. The waves had crept up and caressed the cloth concealing her figure. The darkness continued to watch over her, every day and every night, and consumed her spirit when her body had detached from it. It was her companion. Not all companions are our dearest friends.

My mother said my smile makes her smile. I told her that women shouldn’t be limited by their beauty. That was the first time she slapped me. I haven’t cried since.

On the day I was born, my sister sobbed. She sobbed so much that my mother had to ask my father to get more tissues from the neighbors. The store was too far. It was a cold day. I came out a tan, pinkish lump, pretty enough to go out the next day with my mother to audition for a baby pageant. They said I was too young. My mother said that beauty is in youth and walked out with a vengeance. She made being skinny a need, not a want.

My father once told me it’s the bold that become beautiful. He used to drive me to Dunkin’ Donuts after dance class to get a pink glazed doughnut with sprinkles on top after I changed out of my leotard and ballet shoes. As I got older, my knees would bleed so badly that he would ice them before and after practice while I did my homework.

One day, when my mom was traveling after dropping off my sister at college, my father stepped into my room and locked the door behind him. He sat on my bed and pulled the sheets off. Throwing them on the ground, he grabbed my ankles and pulled me toward him. For the next ten minutes, I thought about the throbbing in my feet as I was touched. He left, and I crawled out the window with a duffle bag and my sister’s black coat. I was no longer a pageant girl.

I begged for a job washing dishes in the city the day I got off the bus. I watched the chefs chop and steam and char and try. I watched them curse, gel, boil, and plate. On a sunny morning in Manhattan, I came in with a homemade dish I quite enjoyed. I started learning from the pastry chef that evening. I baked pies and cakes and other sweets for family meals. My hands stopped cracking from washing dishes all day. Instead, they ached from chopping and peeling and chopping some more. My hair grew past my mother’s accepted length, so I shaved it to prove it could be too short, too. My boobs got bigger as I grew taller. Eventually, I said ‘fuck it’ and bleached my feathery hair platinum blonde. I dyed it back to auburn the following week. My mother’s voice lived within me. Within the perception I had of myself. I wanted to kill whatever lived inside me because of her. It needed to die.

Eventually, I got a job as the assistant pastry chef at the second-biggest restaurant in the world, and I killed it. The voice that lived inside me had died down. I was flying high. But the thing about miracles is that they happen so rarely, and for those lucky enough to be the recipient of such a celestial occurrence, their miracle becomes their life. But they are completely and utterly in over their heads and need to get out sooner than they realize, or else they’ll drown from their own drive. I am not one thing, and I refuse to be seen as the one who got out. All I did was learn how to survive overstimulation to suppress the voice I didn’t like so much.

My sister has been looking for me since I left. To my parents, it’s like I disappeared from the earth, never to bother them again. At least that’s what I got from the letter my sister somehow got to me. She was the only light in my life, and I was her baby sis. We would beat each other down and build each other up, and I would never destroy her view of her father. The kind man I thought I knew. The one I sought for sanctuary from Mom. He was my miracle and my curse. A curse I was linked to for life. And now, I was doing all I could to free myself from this anchor holding me down, too deep to come up for air. My sister knew the monster our mother was. Father Matthew would say to leave it in God’s hands, so I stopped going to church. I stopped praying and thinking about God. That’s what gave her power: thinking she was doing what God wanted her to do.

Wandering the streets, I found myself pulled into a garden not far from the road, down a small path of gently fallen leaves covering dampened dirt. I was led to walk under the shade of a shadow cast from a northern-facing wall as the sun shone on the other side. Something about it warmed my veins, even in the coolness amongst the outer walls of this sanctuary. I reached into my pocket, searching for a lighter to fire up the cigarette hanging from the corner of my mouth since I left my apartment. I reached my arms up, hoping that something in the air above my Frenched hair would strike a thought of how to get beyond the stronghold of bricks. Looking around for a clue, I jumped up, and upon my landing, I felt the urge to start walking right along the wall of ingrown vines and sprouting buds and bushels of berries, close enough that if I turned my head left, my nose would be tickled by bricks. I traced the lines of my face, down my neck, blowing smoke as my brain pretended I was walking along the sandy beaches of Montego Bay, then through the dewy grasses of the Misty Wetlands of the South Kingdom of Aryia.

Something felt familiar. Hidden, yet visible to those who knew it best, somewhere inside them, deep down, tucked away until it needed to be known. I reached down at my feet, where I felt my leg get caught on something wrapping around my jeans. They had caught on a vine, which I tugged at, hoping it would pull away something hiding this secret I so desperately wanted to know. It slowly pulled away from its tapered state against the wall, revealing a rosebud that somehow had sunlight reaching to its leaves, down its thorny stalk, and into the padded dirt hiding its roots. Getting down on my hands, I breathed in the pungent scent of the flower, closing my eyes to let the flavour swirl in my nose, tainting my thoughts and twisting my dreams of darkness to light. I stood up slowly, turning around only to find myself looking at a wall. That’s odd, I thought. I closed my eyes and took in a heavy inhalation, expecting cigarette smoke to fill my lungs. Instead, I found myself breathing in the golden haze of a fresh and dewy garden. Not too wet to be sticky with mud, but enough to coat my skin in glistens. The sky had turned pink, and the sun looked as though it was setting on this tranquil garden. I took a deep breath and stepped forward, but before my foot could touch the ground, I felt my head and my limbs swirl into my body which curved and twisted into thin air. The world around me bent and spun, pulling me back as I tried to feel my hands grab onto something, but nothing would let me hold onto it. And then it stopped. My foot had touched the ground, and as I looked up, I was staring at a desolate wall, vineless and altogether grey and weary. As I traced the wall where the vine I had pulled at once was, my lungs were filled with smoke, as though I had never breathed in that wonderfully supple garden. I coughed out the cigarette that had somehow made its way back between my lips and watched the embers fade, staring longingly at where I once was. Cast aside, the garden no longer wanted me. What had it seen in me that let me in?

I think I’ve lost all sanity when I wake up every morning. My mind is full of blankness. I ponder this thought while I wander, as if a stray cat, into the kitchen towards the fridge. What might there be to fill this emptiness? Perhaps I’m just hungry, but the lack of comprehensible thought produces more panic than I care to admit; so is it food or fulfillment that I need, and are they interchangeable? 

Do I have an agenda… ever? No. Thanks for asking, though. Do I care about love or loss or duty or faith? I will if my lover’s grandmother is the inquirer, but neither exists; therefore, I do not give a crusty fuck about either. I guess I would say I choose war, and by the end of the day, my snack cupboard is empty, my laundry basket is a load fuller, and the radio has been turned up just past the neighborly level of respect.

Maybe tomorrow will be different, and if it is, I’ll get a lover and pretend I’m not a loser and that God exists and that love and loss affect me the way they affect the Pope. But as it turns out, tomorrow is not that day when I am the kind of girl who has a lover whose lover’s grandmother would love. So I continue to wake up, hoping that one day I will be those things. Maybe then I’ll choose peace and finally feel full.

The world seems to whir

As though my life tumbles

Through the wild eastern desert

We’ll end our fate in fumbles

Her hair is silken

Her eyes are golden

My ego soars higher

And higher and higher

And high

The sight of her has blessed my eyes

The sweetness of her face I cannot resist

To which my soul complies

So doth my addiction continue to persist

So high and mighty that, in fact

It punctures the clouds

My heart beats faster

Then, booming rounded gravity

Flashing and blaring blue and green

I am not one to fall so fast

But my end seems one to last

Our timely acquaintance

A moment so quiet

Is stitched to my history

So silent in its mystery

I’m busied with your time

I may not need a line

To fish me from the sky

Or hide me ‘till I die

So now, my humble engagement

Is it all because of you

So may you stay with me, no argument

Until I’m dead and blue

JUST HOW IT FEELS

TO BE SCRUTINIZED

IS HOW HER HANDS FELT

AS THEY TRACED MY NECK

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO KNOW?

WHO IS ASKING?

I DO NOT WANT TO SAY IT OUT LOUD

WHAT HOLDS A GREAT ENOUGH TO BE HEARD?

SHE CAME IN LIKE A BLAZE

EVERYTHING CRUMBLING IN THE WAKE

OF A MEMORY ALL TOO HARSH

TO BE SQUANDERED IN HER DARKEST HOUR

WHAT DO YOU THINK WE ARE MEANT FOR?

PACING THROUGH THE WOODS OF HER THOUGHTS

RUNNING INTO TWIGS OF NUISANCE AND SELF-LOATHING

IF ONLY I COULD PRODUCE

SOMETHING WORTH KNOWING

TO LEARN SOMETHING BY HEART

MIGHT TEAR APART YOUR NERVES

BUT TO NEVER KNOW THE TRUTH

OF ANYTHING MIGHTY ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU FALL

what a waste

He laughed as I burped from my sip of beer

My smile poked through as I tried not to flirt

I think he was made for me

She danced on the roof when I told her to stop crying

Her pattering sounds made me think of the rain

I looked for her wings when she fell

My mother said she wondered if I could put more makeup on

I left my room with a fuller face and puffy eyes

She cupped my cheek and wiggled my ear

Lola lay on the carpet so still

I touched her nose with mine and closed my eyes

Her eyes would make me think that dogs could cry, too

Can sorrow describe the loss I endured?

I floated on driftwood out of the city, away from what I knew.

You were my home, but as I looked around me, all that stayed familiar was the night sky.

If lost were a type of being, it would be me.

My fingers tingle with unfamiliarity, and my hair pricks up and wiggles like snakes crawling up my spine.

I’m afraid of the world my mind has trapped me in.

When broken is all you know, losing hope is not an option.

There is no push without, first, an all-encompassing unraveling.

Your innards must twist and turn out of your skin, and your eyes must bulge like you just discovered the world.