Category: Junior Literary

Dairy Skin

You didn’t tell the moon to stop blinking

It stopped on it’s own

stuttering, wavering, shining

 bright enough to burn

Then going blank

Not even enough time to remember

The soft rays

Just gone

We loved it for it’s power

Now we can’t love anymore

Mr. moon won’t be our chaperone

Ever again

Makes you sad,

Makes sleeping worth the wait

Makes the sky another black ocean

Raging, raging, raging

Then falling

Then screaming

Then silence

Spotlight

Extra

Extra

The Moon is missing                (it is?)  

        (When was this?) 

    (I didn’t even notice.)

(Then what’s in the sky?) Brave enough to ask daring questions

Daring in that almost smart question way

that can give you answers

but it’s too late

it’s gone

congratulations

 you messed it all up….

White poison 

you’re all so funny

so is this

a joke in the form of words

spewing out of mouths like puke

it’s gone, been gone for a long time

but you notice now?

There’s no sky

there’s no moon

never been a moonlit sky

it never existed

Don’t fear

Don’t remember

f    a    d   e 

-Jane 

Liquid Space 

I’ve seen myself in a mirror suspended in a completely white room. Then again I was dreaming but that’s not the point. I know what I saw and it was me, a form of myself that I had no idea even existed. I was an angel. No, a demon disguised as an angel. Probably not, but I wanted to make this dramatic. Anyway, she was standing on the moon. The moon I remember,
and she was happy and full of a nice soft light. A light that had been before, when the moon hung in the sky like a reminder.  A reminder to continue living to our best ability. Yes, that’s what I believe happened to that thing, we stopped believing. Believing in- in something. Our fate rests in our own hands. So let’s get back the-the- the…What was it called again? 

-Eli

Lunar Fall 

comits rain down like promises

i was promised a savior

i was handed a moon rock

and a packet of lighters

that burns holes into my pocket

now i’m out of money

and moons to give

and space

The twinkling stopped two days ago

the cites are up in flames

the water is up to our necks

but look on the bright side

I never learned to swim

I remember as a kid, I used to love lovebugs.  My parents would curse them because they’d cover the car in guts, but I found it to be the car’s fault.  Lovebugs were just trying to live and mate.  I used to play with them all day during their season, trapping them in my hands.  Sometimes I’d shake them like maracas, peeking to make sure they were still alive.

My parents called it cute.  But they didn’t see that I had accidentally suffocated them.  They didn’t see the broken legs or bug guts staining my hands.  Then I’d go try again because I wanted them as pets.

The truth is that it wasn’t cute at all.  I wasn’t thinking of anyone but myself.  It was selfish and irresponsible.  I’d feel terrible when they died, but I’d shake them off and just do it again.  I wasn’t trying to kill them, but I also wasn’t trying to think of how they felt.  I just pretended like I was.

My parents said I loved too much, but did I?  Did I love them at all?  It didn’t matter to me, all I had to do was wipe them off.  There was no blood on my hands.  I didn’t have to bury the bodies.

I used to release red balloons into the sky after storms because I thought of thunder as the sky coughing.  I’d watch the sky swallow them whole like red cherry cough drops, and I thought I had done a good thing.

In reality, I had probably killed animals that way.  They most likely choked on it.  Those plastic balloons will never degrade; they’re just there forever, and I can’t shake them off like lovebug carcasses.  The earth wasn’t coughing; it’s dying.

It’s dying because of you and me and all the plastic balloons released into the sky and all the things we disguise as love.  I didn’t love those lovebugs.  I just didn’t want to feel lonely.

The truth is that it doesn’t really matter anymore.  We can’t singularly save the world, no matter how many cough drops we give it or how much we want to love it.

The only way the Earth will be okay again is when it eats humans the same way it gave birth to them.  It’s our beginning and our end, and in a million years it will be like we never existed.

Sixteen candles sprawled over vanilla icing and lighter fluid.

Take one back, tuck it in the shirt pocket of our father, for every year after he would feather the wings of you in a ruffled manner,

hollow grammar and time to kill. Climbing past Saw Tooth mill and screaming at  the top of lungs and teeth when it finally hits you:

freedom can be found in the gut.

Was there ever any reason in your eyes to kill the boy next door?

You slept soggy and senseless after seeing the lips of his mouth turned upward, Saw Tooth smile, (he was with you at the water tower, ground cut between each palm like pages of scripture,)- he is holy , but alive in only the back of your mind.

There is a small blue blanket in the trunk of your Chevy. There is a bottle of Vodka wrapped underneath, underneath,

underneath the bridges, we escape our realities. We are the goblins hiding under and the people walking over and (you tend to see things). Wrapped sterile in the sanity of being no one.

This makes you someone.

We are good

girls. We are innocent. There is purple near our irises and our hearts are strung together on twisted twine- we are empty and throat slit.

If I could make up one good story about our times together, you wouldn’t be there. I am ruin brutally beaten by another, our mother, father,

brother (hold my hand and tell me the truth).

The vase sits on the table, untouched. Wait a few years and  the mounds of dust will crack it through the center. There are no windows in my house; people don’t want to see the things that fall apart at  the fireplace. Brash black eyelids droop heavy over our frames.

There is no screaming (we have grown out of that, like old pairs of shoes).

Tell me there will be more than the darkness after death. Tell me of the wildflowers poking their heads through before Hell’s wrought iron gate. Tell me it wont hurt too bad.

People can change, and people can remain.  I am one of both, as I have no idea where my mind left me.

I am a body against the asphalt, highway stretched beneath my palms. I will sleep against the desert sand, hand in hand with the ghosts I’ve caught.

And it’s rambling, I know, but there will always be  laughter behind a dripping red grin.

(Again, and againandagain)

sing me a song that come from the soles of your feet and reminds you of your boss’s favorite tie- the same one that hung him from the rafters

wear the jacket that makes you feel like a fallen angel, hidden in the hell of mortality right beside my brother’s broken heart

“Where did he go?”

watch the sunset and wish on the moon as it calls to all of the lost children staring up at the stars from their caverns of misunderstood rationalizations

hold your breath on sunny days and blow out the nectar of your mother’s sweet lies as you choke on the smoke of your grandma’s last cigarette

hear her voice and tell the man sitting next to you on the train that his father would be proud- complement his shoes

“I’m homeless.”

tell me about the summer you fell from a tree and couldn’t remember the color blue, but you knew the color of my eyes

stare at the car sitting in the parking lot-  remember when your mom had the exact same one, and you lost her favorite amethyst ring inside its heart for a year

“Just don’t drop it.”

you dropped it and her heart, losing both to your inability to hold tight to what means the most to you- was it on purpose?

ask your father why he doesn’t love you like he loves the amber in his cup, stop crying when after all these years his answer never changes:

“It doesn’t disappoint me.”

did your mother realize what she was saying when she told you to leave?  you came back- she never asked you to.

throw up the words you didn’t say when you had the chance, it’s too late, they don’t care anymore

“Neither should you.”

I wrote this while listening to a song titled “Rope” by DED, and it includes the line, “I’m not afraid of you, I’m afraid of what I might do.” This made me realize that I feel the exact same way for people in my life.

It’s always been difficult for me to make new friends or converse with people I have not known for a number of years, and I used to tell myself that was because I was terrified of other people. But I realize now that the real truth is that I was scared to get closer to people and open up to them and do something stupid like – I don’t know – trusting them? Letting them in and telling them everything about me and getting attached as I have found that I always seem to do? I’m afraid of what I may or may not do to those people I have grown close to because I have realized from past experiences that things are bound to go wrong at some point, and the end is usually not too far from the downfall. I’m scared of getting too close and being absolutely devastated when they decide to move on – of attaching my rope to them, only to have them tear it to shreds before the knot is completely tied. I always thought that I was afraid of them, but as it turns out, I’m afraid of the possibility of being deeply affected by their leaving my side – of over-reacting to a simple turn of their backs and wave of the hands.

I am terrified of people leaving me. Terrified of eating meals alone and being deprived of human interaction, which takes about a day to occur in my mind. If someone does not want to speak to me or spend just a millisecond of their time with me, then I immediately feel as though I have done something wrong to upset them and that I should try and figure out what it was that I did to try and make it better because I absolutely hate having people I care for not care for me in return. I always feel over-attached and as though my emotions are simply far too much that any other person would be willing to withstand.

Over the last couple of months, I have been on a roller-coaster of believing things are getting better and deciding they are only getting worse. I thought coming here would give me new friends, new opportunities to branch outside of the shell I have been hiding in for the last five years of my life. And it did exactly that for a bit. I was becoming part of a small group of people I was content with. But then, something happened – as usual, right? – and being the new addition, I began to feel as though I was being cast out. And honestly, it’s getting to the point where I’m not too sure what I can do anymore and so I just decide that staying away is best. So that’s what I’m doing.

Assuming that god is real, I think his biggest mistake was creating Satan.

We see god as  the light side and the devil as the dark,

therefore they are truly opposite which makes them truly equal.

Paradise is not always enough for people to give up their ways.

If you want someone to do what you want, you have to put consequences to their actions.

Majority of the Christians I have asked about why they practice Christianity they reply with something like “just incase He’s real”

and I know that He is not God.

Their faith is nothing more than a safety net.

But then again how can the devil even exist?

My parent’s church teaches that god is not a man in the sky.

God is what connects everyone and everything,

God is love.

God is what makes up everything,

which makes sense if god has been there even when there was nothing,

for what else would we be made of if not god?

If god is love then love is everything.

how could we get anything else but love?

how can there be hate when everything else is love?

where would it come from?

how could the devil exist in such a place?

how can you get vanilla from chocolate?

You can’t.

then how?

illusion.

where?

our ego mind.

what?

we are individualized expressions of god.we have to learn how to get back to him.

why would we be separated in the first place?

why?

why?

why?

what is it we are supposed to learn?

what is the point?

what is the point in being someone I’m not for someone who might not exist?

what is the point in making life choices for another life I may not even get?

deep blue // arcade fire

i’ve always loved looking at the sky. whether it was bright and full of clouds or dark and starry-eyed, i loved staring at it. my skies never needed clouds or stars to catch my attention.

i’ve never really figured out what i love so much about staring at the sky, even when there’s nothing in it to stare at. maybe i just love the expansiveness of it, how unending the blue sheets that encase us in our earthy bed really are.

maybe i love looking up and seeing nothing and everything at the same time. one little pinpoint in the sky could be a straight shot to the center of the universe–if there even is one. i can never imagine just how much is out there that we’ve yet to explore, but sometimes i like to try.

most nights when my family would be driving home from a play or a rehearsal or something else, all i could see when i looked up was deep blue. too many headlights on interstates or streetlights in neighborhoods for a star to be seen. but when we got home, when our car crept up into our driveway and i opened my door to go inside, i could see stars.

one good thing about small towns: the lights are never on when you want to look at stars.

i’ve always been able to look above my house and see orion. a stereotypical constellation, but one i love all the same. the first thing i do when getting out of the car after a long drive is look up. i can look up and see those three little stars that make his belt and know that i’m home.

there’s just something about the sky and the stars that inspires something paradoxical in me. they make me feel so alone and small on this little rock, but they also make me feel like we can’t possibly be alone.

when you look up and see stars that burned out eons ago, watching ghosts as they poke little white holes in blue sheets, everything you do almost feels insignificant. the universe is bigger than you or i could ever even fathom, even though all i can see of it from where i stand in my driveway is deep blue.

maybe in all of my isolation, in the suburbia that never found purchase in my veins, i found solace in the sky. i found solace in looking up at those little white holes, at orion’s belt that greeted me above my house every night without fail for seven years. maybe i felt alone at home, but i look at those stars that could be suns for planets we haven’t seen yet and don’t feel quite so lonely anymore.

i can look up and wonder what aliens see our sun and wonder if some faraway planets orbit it as they do their own sun. i can even wonder if my friends are staring at the same stars i am, and the loneliness i feel in daylight subsides.

i guess i find comfort in knowing that we share the same sky.

I don’t know why my mom is the way she is and to be quite honest I can’t find it in me to care. All I know is that it has nothing to do with me. She’s  been miserable her whole life, I don’t think she would know what to do with herself if she wasn’t. I can’t do anything about that. However, I suppose most people in my situation would assume that it was their fault. People tend to always blame themselves for not being loved by others. That it has to be them that is lacking something. I don’t think like that. My mom never took the time to get to know me so how would she know what I’m lacking? I think if people listened more they would understand that not everything is a result of their doing. Sometimes things in life just happen and it’s out of your control. Some people are just bad. Some people are just good.  Some people just don’t mix, and “who had a baby with who” doesn’t matter or change that. No matter how you’re connected, it doesn’t change how they live their life. They’re not obligated to care or cater to you. Sometimes what they choose will benefit you and sometimes it will hurt you. You’ll do the same to them. You can’t always influence the people around you. Sometimes the chemistry just isn’t there. Sometimes all you can do is leave. So I did.

This is an inner monologue of my character Pino; he’s from a comic project I’m working on.

in a field of dandelions,

you are a beautiful black rose.

and dandelions are

gorgeous, of course,

but they cannot even begin to

compare to your beauty.

you are the type of stunning

that makes people drop

their mouths in amazement

and stop whatever they

are doing to watch you move.

your petals are a bit torn,

but some find that adoring.

you have been replanted more times

than you or I can count –

dug up, shredded to pieces,

stomped on repeatedly

and eaten by wild animals.

but you always seem to

re-bloom in the same place.

people admire you,

and you do not even know it.

you are unaware of how many

lose their breath when they see you –

a dark face of black

inside a sea of bright,

nauseating yellow and white –

and come to a halt,

just to look at you for a moment or two.

you have no clue how many

have walked up to you

and tried to pluck you from the ground

and have pricked their

fingers on your thorns

because the amount of

beauty you possess

causes them to forget

that roses have thorns.

they see how gorgeous you are,

and they choose to erase

the fact of the flower itself

and its thorns’ –

your thorns’ –

existence.

you captivate them.

you poke them without

realizing what you are doing –

it’s not like you have a choice

to be the way you are

and to have those thorns.

it’s not like you enjoy

bringing pain to those

who adore you.

but it happens anyways.

it happens because you are a rose,

and roses have thorns.

it’s almost like a defense mechanism.

like the rest of you knew

the hurt that was to come,

so it grew thorns to protect itself.

or either it was exhausted

from being plucked from its home,

and so, it is preventing

any others from doing it again.

your thorns are your

only form of staying safe –

of keeping your beautiful

petals barricaded.

they have been your wall,

and they will continue to be

until someone gentle

enough comes along

and asks you if you are okay

with them cutting your thorns off –

until someone is soft with you

and has your permission

to tear those walls down.

because without your thorns,

you are vulnerable.

and the last time you allowed yourself

to be vulnerable,

someone tore you apart

and took every ounce

of your beauty for themselves.