Month: April 2018

(This piece is inspired by Mallori’s ‘things i miss’ post)

When I was 12 years old, I wore the same size shoe as my Aunt Maudell. Hers were pointy and old-lady looking, and I usually just made fun of them. She absolutely loved my shoes. The only problem was she always refused to wear closed-toed shoes, so the only shoes of mine she would care to ‘borrow’ would be my sandals. This all sounds fine and dandy, but at the time, I had and even more prevalent hatred for shoes, and if I had to wear something, it would have been sandals.  I would constantly have to go to her house to reclaim my shoes. I hated it. I secretly loved it. I loved that someone took the time to notice something about me that they liked and would love to do for themselves.

Maudell was a dancer. She grew up in the Roaring Twenties and knew exactly which way to twist and turn to get everyone’s attention. By the time I was old enough to be taught her moves, she was almost 90. Her jiggy hips turned to shuffled little steps across the dance floor. She couldn’t swing her arms without falling, so her windmill arms hopelessly grasped the person in front of her.

People say that you start to die as soon as you’re born, but science says you only start to regress after about 25. Maudie started to die the second she couldn’t dance anymore. Or better, when she couldn’t dance on her own. She wanted to twist and turn and sweat and have all eyes on her. Her old joints couldn’t do it anymore, and neither could she.

She told me she would have rather died on the dance floor than in a hospital bed, losing her fight with cancer.

“If I can’t dance Little Charlotte, should I even bother to stay alive?”

She was straight-forward like that.

(She, with the help of my grandmother, had me addicted to coffee at the ripe age of 10.)

There was a point when I had started taking dance lessons in an attempt to impress Maudie, but we both knew dancing wasn’t my thing. It wasn’t that I wasn’t good at it, but it did not hold my lifeline and she could tell. I gave up dance when I was 10.

Instead, I started writing. I dedicate all of my writing to my grandmother because she is my bestfriend and my greatest muse, but between the lines I can hear Aunt Maudell’s voice and creaky hips.

And the sound of my sandals tapping the floor.

I like clothes.  I like the comfy kind that stretch and dangle.  I drop to my knees in baggy pants and over-sized shirts.  (my first true love is baggy clothes)

I don’t like the pants that fit at the ankles.  (I never have.)  They always made me feel exposed, like not even my ankles were safe.)  Neither did I like tight shirts.  (and as I grew, I liked for them to cover to my thighs as a form of security.)

And then I became aware.  The guys in school (who never talked to me) began to talk and look (they still never approached me.)  I didn’t think anything of it.  I only ever talked to my friends (a group of 4, mostly) anyway.

Then I got to high-school.  9th grade took so much adjusting.  (I think I’m scarred from it.)  Guys noticed too much.  They said too many things.  Did too many things.  I became so paranoid.  (This is where I gained my sharp-shooting eyes.)  I never stopped walking.  (Daily procedure: keep your head down; smile if something is said, but keep walking, fast; make it to class but stay seated as much as possible)

I joined the cross-country team that year.  And choir, track, and soccer.  (I was already in band.)  Walking was HELL.  It was actual, living, breathing hell.  I couldn’t get from Point A to Point B without some boy spitting what he thought was game.  (I just wonder how any girl ever fell for them)

Soon I met a guy who did know how to charm, and yada yada yada, we got together.  Nothing changed.  One group of guys even went as far as to threaten me and my relationship.  (I didn’t tell my boyfriend because I couldn’t have him going to jail.  He was 18 and they would’ve sent him)

Track was always bad with the football boys there.  (Track boys were at least a little more respectful.)  Long story short, I got told to bend over.  (I bought more baggy pants for the next week, which are harder to run in.)  I loved to run, but it became miserably angry. (Yes, I became the angry _____girl. (no one knew what ethnicity I was.))

Soccer wasn’t too bad.  I was pretty comfortable besides the persistent flirting and commenting from Megan’s boyfriend.  (He was no good and now has another baby on the way.)

Cross-country was (for the most part) a safe place.  One guy got mighty close to me smacking the testosterone off of him.)

Oh, and those tight pants with the tight ankles, those became my regular my tenth grade year.  I succumbed to the fact that what had happened the previous year was normal.  Although, i will say that my tenth grade year was a lot better.  I had earned quite the reputation the previous year despite what I told you above.  Everyone knew not to mess with me.  (Most everyone)  That’s when I started wearing tight things and showing off more (still not too much, I wasn’t about that.) I was still the angry ___ girl.   It was all just a front though, it think.  (i’m truly not sure.  I think this attitude melded with my previous identity)  I only became tough because I had to.

Now, I’m here and I feel safe.  I show off.  (this is too safe.)  The other day, I was reminded of the real world.  I was reminded that MSA can only guarantee that safety until graduation.  (soon, this bubble should burst.)  This scares me.

here is a compiled list of organized songs that help me be a real human: (if you listen in order, you end up strange, i think)

 

(Also, hey! The pictures kind of represent how each song makes me feel!)

New Year’s Eve, Mal Blum

Emptiness is Like a Closet Full of Your Old Clothes, Wishing

Memento Mori, Crywank

Be Your Own 3am, Adult Mom

Baby, Born Without Bones

Holy Forest, PInkshinyultrabast

Sleep Talk, Diet Cig

For A Girl in Rhinelander, Washington, Wingnut Dishwashers Union

Wolves,  Phosphorescent

Just Like Honey, The Jesus and Mary Chain

How Simple, Hop Along

Phase, Hovvdy

No One is Ever Going to Want Me, Giles Corey

Heart Sunk Hank, Johnny Flynn

The Gun Song– no trigger version, Car Seat Headrest

Codeine, Trampled By Turtles

Brave as a Noun, AJJ

Bloodhail, Have a Nice Life

 

i was all over her, salvia plath

It’s So Nice, I Tried to Run Away When I Was 6, (But Got too Scared to Cross the Street)

 

 

Being in love with an artist is heartbreaking

You are in love with him and he is in love with his ex

While you admire him, he obsesses over a woman he lost years ago because he was selfish and young

When you walk through your own home now, every wall bares a painting of a woman you’ve never met but you feel as if you know because of him

Her eyes, which should be lifeless, are filled with burning passion that is not directed at you

And you know it is not her own, but the man’s who has spent so much time trying to recreate the perfect image of her

She stares back at you with different emotions

Grief

Lust

Loss

And in the strokes of paint that create her, you see him

Your lover has a hunger you cannot  satiate because you are not the woman of his desire

But a mere substitute to pass the time

And although you love him, his work, his passions

You do not love her

You are jealous, envious

You wish she would disappear from your home, your life, him

But she will stay and so will your heartbreak

And you will try to force an incompatible morphing between you and her

In image, because that is all you have

You do not know much about her, so how could you duplicate what he recreates

And you know that you are not enough

Bratz Gone Wild

We’re stained glass soldiers, spitting sunflower seeds under
wind chimes. I’m eating lemons whole at dinner tables without
a face to impress and hummin’ in the creak of porch swings, trying
to show you I know your favorite indie band. Fog rolls in because
I like the way my breath looks in the cold— it makes me feel like
a dragon. Wind blows; you’re the big bad wolf this Halloween.

But you’re tired of that Bratz cherry lipstick, you want those
candied toxins. Yasmin can’t save you anymore, it’s all about
spitting tobacco in leather jackets with cigarette holes. Your mother
asks you why? that was a new jacket. Tell her something mysterious,
compare it to the holes in society where our taxes flood into.
Steal street signs my father paid for because you need a spine.
It’s okay. I forgive you. I’m scared, too.

We’re sippin’ Irish whiskey now, one hand on the wheel,
shooting Bambi and smoking cigarettes (because it makes
me feel like a dragon). Your new favorite music is rap—how
do I hum that? Your lipstick is red eyeshadow because
your mother will only buy you Bratz lipstick, she says anything
else is for whores. I promise not to tell. It doesn’t matter,
you leave anyways. I am left to bury Bambi’s body.

I’m sweating off Vyvanse now, screaming thunderstorms
and crying rain over lost love, huddled in blankets as I sob
into friends under bathroom counters at five a.m. I’ve got orange
fingernail paint, but only on one hand— the other is stained
black from dying my hair. I’m the champion of fight club.
I’m still scared.
I’m scared.
I still hum your favorite songs.

so like. life is exhausting. what can ya do.

a lot of things are going on all at once, and my brain can’t quite figure out how to process them.

my brain’s been like this for a while. four years, at least.

like, i used to look forward to learning how to drive and going out with my friends and planning what my sweet 16 would be like and going to college and becoming a doctor or something like that.

i used to be ambitious. used to have a drive and a passion for my future. the things idolized by tv shows used to actually be exciting to me.

then i found myself at a point where i wasn’t thinking about my future because i didn’t think i’d make it there.

i’ve gotten out of that point, thankfully, but the feeling still remains. the complete lack of understanding, the loss of ambition.

the future started to scare me. it still does, sometimes. the future means leaving monotony behind, abandoning the routine i’ve come to depend on in the past four years.

familiarity, get me through the day.

i have no idea what i want to do with my life because i thought it would be over by now.

i’ve managed to dig myself into this hole of complete and utter fear of the future. my mom is researching colleges for me because she knows how badly it stresses me out. i never really looked into colleges, never submitted my act scores to any schools, never did anything for my future.

and now i’m going through lists of schools that offer the majors i want and planning college tours this summer.

this is the future. this is what i didn’t think i’ve ever see. and thinking i’d never see it meant figuring i didn’t need to worry about it.

so now all of the worry that should’ve been building up gradually over the past few years has slammed onto my desk like mountains of paperwork at a cubicle desk. it’s all coming at me faster and faster than i can handle it.

but i think i like it? i think i’m excited for it?

all i know – all i’ve ever really known – is that i want to write. i want to be an author. i want to write books that affect kids the same way they affected me. i want to create something that’s there for somebody, something that inspires.

i’m sure i’ll figure it out eventually.

these things just take time i don’t have.

there was a boy named dallas in my kindergarten class. i cant remember his last name but it doesn’t matter because  i loved him. he smelled like those prepackaged mandarin oranges you can buy in bulk.

i would carry my love for dallas home every afternoon, in the curls of my baby hairs and the paper cuts on my knuckles. i would carry dallas everywhere with me, like he was pressed lilacs or baseball cards. I would walk home with my mother, hand in hand, her palms turned inward, hiding the scars on her wrists, and I would make sure to stop at the house on the corner, the little blue one with white trim, to stop for a fleeting second, just to watch his bus drive by.

dallas had dimples and wore crayola marker stains like canvas paint. I thought he was beautiful.

when i moved schools my mother stopped walking with me. i would trace the sidewalks by myself, the lines in the earth like the broken lifelines on my mother’s palms. I would purposely squish the cracks beneath my chubby toes. i was usually late.

…

i always imagined kissing would be sweet, delicate. hollow kissing, like dancing with bird bones. i always imagined the regular things like graduating top of the class and dancing at prom and praying before every meal were stained into the religion of my adolescence, not worn as a blanket I could shrug off at fifteen.  i think it’s strange how things change as time unfurls, the way the ferns are unfolding outside my bedroom window.

my new house wilts when it rains. my mother is always sleeping in the bath with the door open, the last time I went to check on he running water I saw the blood and the body and-

…

i am the daughter of misfortune and dependency and it’s not complaining if it’s the truth.

I don’t talk about my father much because there isn’t much to say. i don’t want to be my mother but i am i am i am, and it hurts the way the leaving does but here is the pain that i felt when she left.

…

there are bodies inside of my body, there are lungs within lungs within lungs in my chest in my throat and i want them all to breathe at once, but each takes their turn while the others are choked down to my hips in pooling green ivy.

so much breathing. the in and out and i think about you a lot more than i should. i say that i shouldn’t not because it’s not nice to think but because i cannot explain the way i think when it’s about you.

i am having trouble calming my mind. the blood is green and sopping and thick like the sweater i have stitched on my body since seventh grade, and i am so tired.

i imagine all fairies drooped over their guest beds, quietly becoming their alcohol poisoning.

like tinker bell with tunnel vision. neverland fading in and out of view from tiny, blinking irises.

i believe it is fitting how my faith is dust.

Seizure Warning: Extreme flashing lights and rapid blinking. 

Scatter(ed) scatter(ed) scat t er (ed) and a (  . .a..)(..r..)(..m..) length away from..~you~ 

 Once upon a time the world glitched. Then stripped static people counted on numbers to be heard. A hundred million people stayed that way and people died that way. Puncturing holes in eye sockets to fit the big screens. Headlight hairs pointed towards the crowd-s morbid curiosity. They all blinked in unison.

I have always feared the dark

In the dark a hand is not a hand

a hand does not belong to you

a hand does not exist 

In the dark each finger is a stranger

they wiggle to poke holes in your skin 

Each one betting on who can scar the most

each toe a long lost relative

They stand at attention and in the dark 

they rage war on the bed-sheets

 

 

Mr. Man didn’t believe in good luck. 

He promised me fifty gold coins if i could do a back flip off a cliff 

I lowered the bet to twenty five. 

He asked why.

“I don’t need fifty when i’m dead” 

 he said Yes but why twenty five?

I didn’t want to answer that question

so i jumped

The flight was great. 

The food was like heaven on a platter 

The boys and the girls were wonderful 

Munching on the high atmosphere like a last meal 

The soft shatter of windows and the implosions were electrifying

my toes wiggled in the confides of my metal shoes 

The seat belt tugged up my neck 

My ears bounced from my head 

It was my first time flying.

Her kisses were sweet 

Every rapid touch of parted  lips sent cavities to my core 

my sticky fingers tangled in a mass of curly chocolate hair 

Or teeth smacked bubble gum tongues 

We rolled in the mass of too sweet sweets dripping sugar 

and canes

rows of attentive buyers lined the streets 

eye wide and sapping 

hands itching-twitching on jumpy legs 

fingers flying down rough material 

and clutching flimsy paper bags 

Bells chimed in time 

each count ticking down flashing shutters 

frigid palms gathered old candies 

and bodies bounced around bodies

 .Blood. – .Red. – .Hues. 

The talk of the town

is covered in red

and pink dripping sin

Laced too tight across

bouncing a chest

The man of the house 

cross eyed and bushy tailed 

his hair flops across his eyes

frail fingers lace in the bounding locks 

and tussles the disobedience out of wolves 

we call those women 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have an unimaginable hatred for speaking. I don’t like the way words feel as they make their way up my throat. My ears ache when I have to hear my own voice for too long. It’s an odd thing to have to deal with because at some points of the day or the week I might feel like imputing on a conversation or voice an opinion of mine, but I don’t feel like it. Talking takes a lot of energy. 

I once read a book about this girl who went so long without talking that her parents put her in a mental institution because they thought she was sick in the head. Psych  doctors tried to trick her into speaking, but she had gone so long that she just didn’t need to. In her point of view, she explained how little talking people actually need to do. Her friends and parents could tell when she was upset just by the way she acted- no speaking required. Facial expressions conveyed when she was happy or sad or frustrated, etc… Anyway, at the end of the book they didn’t even get her to talk, she fell down the stairs or something and had to talk to doctors about the pain. I don’t really remember. I just know that in the end she did what she wanted to and was happy. 

I don’t know how that correlates to me other than the fact that I’m afraid my mom will put me in some psych ward. I just don’t like speaking. It does make it hard to form relationships with people that don’t already know me or how I think, and that’s an unwanted side-effect. 

~

Another thing I can add is that I haven’t had a whole lot of inspiration for writing lately.

(as you can tell by this post)

I want to blame it on putting so much into the short story and play that we had to do for our nine-weeks test, but it’s probably just me being obnoxious to myself. I’m not really sure. 

This post has no real meaning. I have nothing that needs to be said.

(no pun intended) 

An update: Since making this draft I have differentiated my lack of speaking for, usually, not caring. I guess that should have been apparent from the beginning, but I like to be hard-headed, even against myself. I figured this out mostly by just being around a person(s) that I genuinely wanted to be around; I had so much to say to this person- things that I had thought I was comfortable keeping in my head, but I guess not.   

 

I started writing a book, and I’m super excited about it.  It’s pretty ambitious for a first book, but I’m going to attempt it anyway.  So far, I’ve only written first drafts of the prologue and some of the first chapter, but I have all of the major plot points thought out and charted.

The plot centers around six wizards, one white, one green, one purple, one blue, one yellow, one red.  My concept is that there has been one wizard of each of these colors since the beginning of time, and every time one of them dies, a new one is born that takes the last one’s place.   The only way for one of the wizards to die is for them to use all of their magic which is measured by how long their beard is.  Every time they use some of their magic, their beard shortens a certain amount based on how much magic the act required.  It will grow back but only as quickly as a regular person’s beard would in real life.  They, of course, have plenty of time to wait for this because they can live to be centuries old.

When the plot begins, the reader is first introduced to Ulk, a giant ogre who absorbs energy from the sun and is incredibly strong and in the middle of destroying a village.  As he does this, an army approaches.  Ulk begins fighting the army effortlessly because of how powerful he is.  The army keeps him distracted as four of the wizards, Sylfaen the White, Rockwell the Purple, Garamond the Green, and Bauhaus the Blue, all use their magic together to create an enormous disc in the sky that blocks out the sun over the valley in which Ulk is destroying the village.  Suddenly, Ulk is vulnerable to the attacks the men are attermpting.  This enrages him and causes him to go into a frenzy, killing soldiers left and right.  This gives time for the wizards to cast another spell, putting the ogre to sleep.

This puts an end to Ulk’s reign of destruction.  The wizards walk toward the slumbering beast.  Sylfaen the White, the oldest and most powerful of the four wizards present tells the others that have done well, but Garamond the Green disagrees.  He is enraged that Sylfaen allowed Ulk to take so many lives for so long when they could have stopped him far earlier if Sylfaen had called them together to do so.  Bauhaus the Blue tries to tell Garamond that he should accept that Sylfaen, being their leader of sorts, is very knowledgeable and most likely had a reason for allowing Ulk to exist for as long as he did.  Garamond is beyond the point of reason, however, and teleports away leaving behind a cloud of green smoke.

Sylfaen says farewell to Rockwell and Bauhaus and teleports away to the place he believes Garamond most likely went, Mazakala, a neutral city in the middle of the continent where the wizards meet to discuss the state of the world and also where wizards are raised from birth and eventually trained by the other wizards.  When he appears here, a nurse who takes care of Calibri the Yellow runs to him and tells him that Garamond grabbed Calibri and disappeared again without a word.  This leads Sylfaen to the next place he is sure that Garamond must have gone, Riobe, the domain of Malgun the Red, the sixth wizard who isolated himself from the others long ago and rules his domain wickedly.

Sylfaen stands before Malgun’s giant red clay tower and calls up to him.  Malgun confirms what Sylfaen feared, that Garamond brought Calibri to Malgun and died in the process due to how little magic he had left from the enormous task he’d performed.  Sylfaen knows that he is not powerful enough to retrieve Calibri and does not even know where Malgun has him hidden away, so he leaves because there is nothing he can do.

The plot thus far is contained entirely within the prologue, and the first chapter picks up a century later when Calibri and Castellar, the next incarnation of the green wizard, are both roughly 100 years old.  I won’t reveal anymore about my book at this time, but I am extraordinarily excited about it and can’t wait to write it.