Don't Tell

The lilac sky leaves us in the darkest time.

You stagger across the dim corridor floor
And again the things that escape your throat
Are nothing but a cluster of nonsense words.
It's moments like this that make me miss
The days of cherry flowers and bent trees.

You ask me with honey-dripping words,

"Do you recall that hopeless time

When you sank onto the living room floor

As the policeman said he all but missed

Your father's limp corpse hung amidst the trees?"

And your honey is poison searing my throat.

I want to tell you that I wouldn't miss

Your careless touches and indifferent words

If you were gone tomorrow by the time

I plunge into the lake behind the trees

And let the water set fire to my throat,

But I can't take my sunken eyes off the floor. 

If only your gaze didn't clench shut my throat,

I'd say, "I remember when you made me miss

His funeral of gray skies and dead trees

And when you sat on the cold kitchen floor

Making black ashes of his last words."

I'd tell you, "I know all those desperate times."

But still, I stare at the frayed carpet floor

And your scoff sings along with the trees

Rustling their leaves, and you speak without words.

Your eyes are rusted daggers at my throat

And I can't tell, after all this time,

What it was that I had so badly missed.

As the moon peeks out from behind the trees

Thoughts yearn for courage to leave my throat

But I know they will never be spoken words.

(Sestinas are too hard to write. I almost killed myself while writing this.)

Sing For Me, Elise

You hide under

A guise
Of half-steps
And shy stutters
But within you,
There are blushing words
Waiting to be heard.

Singing your song isn't easy,
Elise,
So let me hear your voice
Or I might drive myself crazy
Trying to figure you out.

Elise, the least 

You could do
For me
Is let me hear
your love aloud.

So tonight,
With hands intertwined,
Tangled in winter sheets,
Won't you please
Sing for me, Elise?

(Objective of this poem: use near rhymes and end rhymes. I am not that well acquainted with rhyming.)

But We're Not Bubbles

“Let’s go until we hit the rocks,”

you said with much confidence.

And like the talk

of a politician and the mock

of a lovesick boy

your words never meant much.

We ran too fast and we fell too deep

till we were bubbles that seeped

from ocean rifts but we

keep charging toward the cliff, as though

we know

we’re clouds full of breath and silver, as if

the Big

Dipper would swoop down to scoop us

up into the sky

the ocean above our heads

and we’d be bubbles,

floating still up,

to where we were sure we

belonged.

(I'm turning this in tomorrow. I may be very proud of how this turned out.)

"I don't think you understand. You're so privileged; I'm so jealous of you."

Oh, if only you knew. If only you could be 13 year old me, walking in the cold through a dirt road carrying five grocery bags with my sister and mom trailing behind me, out of breath, almost dragging a large worn bag filled with more groceries. We were too embarrassed to carry home 14 plastic bags at 10 o' clock at night.

If only you could be 13 year old me, waiting on the stairs of the apartment knowing that I would miss my eighth grade band concert where I had a duet with my friend, listening to my mom continuously say that we couldn't go unless our father drove out to go to my concert, but really neither he nor we had a car. Father was too busy earning money in a stuffy kitchen to keep our stomachs full. I listened to my friend accuse me of abandoning her on purpose because I chickened out.

If only you could be 13 year old me, scooping up strawberry flavored Nesquik powder in my mouth because that was the only thing we had in the house to eat, watching my mother vomit stomach acid until her stomach was empty of that, too, gulping down a Carl's Jr. burger that my brothers brought when they finally decided that our claims of starving for days were probably true and confirmed that "there's nothing but ketchup in the refrigerator."

If only, right? But I only nod and smile at you because you won't ever know.

There was a part of me that was afraid that I had not achieved anything during my high school career, that I had just kind of let the years pass by so I could just get it over with. That's the attitude I had for a while now, anyway; let's get it done and get out. But looking at it today, I convinced myself otherwise. There are a lot of things I've done in the past four years. There are a lot of things that happened during that short time, and there are so many wonderful and amazing people that I've come to meet (and many terrible people as well).

When I missed the first day of my high school freshman year, I was thoroughly convinced that four years was going to be an eternity. It wasn't. But I am an entirely different person to that girl who was walking home from the second day of school with an armload of textbooks because her mom couldn't afford to have a car. It's an amazing feat how one person can change so drastically in the short span of four years; those four years have introduced me to struggles that I still remember so vividly, people of such diversity who've all influenced me in both good and bad ways, and changes and maturation and all these other things that I can't really list. There's no doubt, really, that in each and every place I've been in since the beginning of high school, I've acquainted myself with different versions of me. There were days when I had persuaded myself that I would never see this day (because I was very sure I'd be dead before it)  and it's a miracle that I've come this far.

So, Jenny, good job on not dying and making it this far. I'm not going to say good job for doing well in school because that's a given.

Here's to an end to a brilliant, thrilling, and capricious chapter to my life. Here's to not giving up when there seems to be no way out. Here's to going on and finding a way when you're trapped.

"I was a normal child. Which is to say, I was selfish and I was not entirely convinced of the existence of things that were not me, and I was certain, rock-solid, unshakably certain, that I was the most important thing in creation. There was nothing that was more important to me than I was."

-Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

His fingers wrap around the mug, steam fogging up his glasses. He doesn't even like coffee; he has no idea why he ordered it. The pads of his fingers sting from the heat, but he doesn't let go. He likes the feeling of having something solid to hold on to.

He stares at the door. He doesn't want to miss the moment she walks in. He wants to greet her and act like he's completely fine- totally not nervous, what- and have the upper hand in the meeting today because, damn it, it's always been like that.

And she does walk in, and he does greet her. He's not sure if he appears as completely nerve-free as he wants to, but that's okay, because she's always been oblivious.

Her voice is the same as it was four years ago, when she said goodbye before hopping into her car to go off to a fancy university or something. She's the same height, and her hair is the same length, and she still moves her hands in those same frantic motions when she talks. 

But she's different somehow. It's weird. He can't place a finger on it. 

She thanks the waitress for her soup (she always orders soup; she claims that she's way too lazy to chew food and, plus, it's cheap) and she drinks water first, as she always did before eating. 

She talks in the same sarcastic way, and her laugh is the same ringing of bells and chimes. He can hear her tapping her foot. 

Fingers playing with the hems of her sleeves. Eyes rolling at the ridiculous things he says. Head nodding and shaking at just the right moments. She is the same, ordinary, insignificant (in the best way possible) girl that she was four years ago. It's extremely peculiar that everything about her has changed. 

Her hands trace the patterns of the wood on top of the table while his trace the hems on the sides of his jeans. 

So much for having the upper hand.

The lunch line is too long, snaking along the walls and corners of the room. The children run toward the cafeteria after the bell rings just so they don't have to wait an extra five minutes, and the unfortunate ones that reach the line a little to late always grumble and complain.

Most of the kids are holding little cardboard tubes from toilet and kitchen paper rolls, taped together with adolescent clumsiness. When the kids hold them up to their eyes, the wrinkled, colored plastic wrap on the opening of the tube is visible. 

"It's too bad you couldn't make one."

"Yeah, I can't believe you forgot to bring the tubes!"

"It's okay. I didn't want to make one, anyway."

The girl's hands are empty unlike her friends'. The apparent lie flows from her mouth, but anyone over the age of nine (which there was none in the vicinity) would have seen the envy in her eyes as she stared at the poorly-made toys.

They're petty things, really, just simple contraptions that, when you look through one, you see everything in the room in tinted color. Just a toy to keep the children occupied during a free class period.

A cold breeze blows through the open windows, way above their heads, but none of the children notices it, too busy playing with their tubes.

The little girl is bored, and her eyes trail through the other kids in the line, up the walls, and across the wide windows. She's glad that she listened to her mom and brought her winter jacket. The November weather surely is bipolar. 

She doesn't see the sun, hidden behind thick, gray clouds. Maybe it'll rain today, she thinks. She grimaces, because that would mean she would have to walk home in the rain without an umbrella. 

The line's only moved forward a few inches but she doesn't mind. She doesn't feel that hungry.

If her friends notice that she isn't paying attention to what they're saying, they don't mention it. They just go on playing with their new toys. 

She likes the color of the sky even though it's her mom's least favorite weather. It isn't intrusive like the sun or indecisive like the clouds; it is just solidly gray. 

No one else notices the small, white flecks come through the open windows except the little girl. The first snowfall of the year, and the children don't even bother to look up from their trinkets. The proctor doesn't even bother to close the windows.  

The line moves up again, but the little girl doesn't take her eyes off of the open windows. 

There were ducks outside the window.

She stared at them in fascination, eyes brimmed with child-like wonder that was only present in moments of vulnerability and openness. It was rare- so much so that I had forgotten that she, too, was capable of such a look- to see this expression come across her face, and I would have done anything to keep it there for a little longer.

As the ducks waddled back toward the lake, and as she went back to the stove to finish cooking the measly meal that she would later call 'dinner', I wondered how a pair of ducks could bring out such beauty in her  when I could not.