Where I Am From (again)

Sweet Tea Time

It's the hurry up and wait that gets you

The slow turning of everyday into some day

The glacial slide of present into future as days melt together like the ice in a glass on porch on a hot summer afternoon

The heat of decision turning ice cold anticipation into chilly condensation as choices lead to consequences lead to cool reality and lukewarm peace as you sip on still sweet tea, less refreshing but still speaking of love and home on the tongue till someone else makes a decision

To put more ice in your cup

To He Who I Once Loved

I promised you something, laying on a curb in a tiny town, bits of broken asphalt digging into my back 

I made a vow under the stars holding your sweaty hand in mine 

I cleaved my heart to yours through a conversation to rival those had by ancient philosophers looking up at the same moon we beheld on that fateful night 

I promised to hold you in my soul even as my body got used to being held by your hands, large and unsure aginst my waist feeling like maybe we were too young to truly love 

I remember that night the snell of the freshly cut grass of the suburbuan maze we wandered deep into the night 

Do you remembeer the years to follow? Telling me I was special but treating me like normal 

Do you remeber breaking my heart? 

I kept my promise but not in the way you may think, I still think of you, the reminder of what we were still makes me cry and I still pray for you I pray for who you may have been and who we could have become but 

my dedication to those promises has been fading even as the skin you touched sloughs off my body in sheets of replacing cells 

Maybe by the time all of it is gone I will be ready to break my promise 

Light

I saw the light of day begin to dawn

I watched the final rays of moonlight die

I’ve seen the end of life

And birth begin

I know when my frail breath will leave my lungs

"I think I have cancer, no really I think I have cancer" she said as she shook his shoulders trying to get his attention

"babe last week you had the avian flu and the week before that you had ringworm and the week before that you thought you had meningitis"

"seriously though look I have a growth on my neck just below my ear" she pulled his hand around to feel what she was talking about, he felt the spot and yes there was something there

"okay, I'll call the doctor tomorrow and we will get it looked at" they went to bed peacefully and awoke with all the trappings of the next day forgetting about the previous nights conversation, she mentioned it a few more times and each time he promised he'd go with her to her doctors appointments, or remind her to call the doctor so they could go get it looked at

-but they never did, just like he didn't believe her when she was convinced her cough meant avian flu and her spot on her arm meant ringworm and her headache meant meningitis but this time... they should've

Oblivion

there is no such thing as oblivion. We are enduring we have souls that live on after our corporeal bodies run out of reasons to endure. We are eternal. We were created, yes created; to live on forever in some form whether life or death we do endure souls are forever things not just here and now things. Oblivion is a myth. Oblivion is impossible unless you don’t exist. Because, as Newton said, every ACTION has an equal and opposite reaction; living is an action, an action that creates another action that creates another action that creates many more actions that never end unless an outside force acts upon it and an action as powerful as beginning eternity would need an action as powerful as a beginning to bring oblivion about. And besides that, we are remembered.

We are remembered by people and then when those people die we are remembered by the people who were told about us and even if we become a legend where events are altered and names are changed and no one can recall who exactly who I was the places I was will remember me. My footsteps will haunt the places I’ve walked. The mountains will remember when my eyes looked upon them. The trees will whisper to each other and say “I remember the girl who stroked our branches and caressed our leaves.” The rocks will say “I remember the girl who cried out to the creator alongside us.” The wind has memorized the shape of my face, the sky holds the color of my eyes, and the stars know the whims and whispers of my heart; the earth will remember me. The earth will remember you. Hallways know every foot that has touched them. Walls can recollect every mark made on them by hands big and small. Cars know who has been pushed up against them and kissed like their life depended on it. Bleachers know who has sat upon them and who has stood in front of them but rarely sat because they were too excited about the event happening. Every single thing you touch with your fingers you leave a piece of yourself behind when you pick your finger up.

Life is like that as well. You leave cells everywhere, you leave pieces of yourself everywhere for others to unknowingly pick up and carry with them until their days run out then someone else will pick up their cells and your cells together. You see? We have all connected through so many bonds that it is impossible to break them.  The way we talk, eat cereal, walk, read, write, type, poop, sleep, shower, love, feel. All of these things each and every person does in a perfectly unique way so if nothing else you will be remembered by the universe for being the only person to do things exactly the way you do them so that no one else will do ANYTHING exactly like you. Ever. End of story.

We the few can see them, the lonely hearts, the spirits, the wandering lovers cursed to bring love to others because they lost their true loves in life

Those of us that can see our fae friends all we feel is the loss of their soul, we aren't new, in fact, we are the oldest. we have been around the longest of any of the races 

we are the dryads, we who are kith and kin to the angelic presences and demonic influences because we are bred of both

we who find solace in the wild places 

we who hear the language of the rivers and listen and know the whispering conversations of the trees

we who find out comfort in the waters of the world, the natural people, those who see and hear the truth in the words of the wilds of the world 

Self Medication

Caffeine, Sugar, Copious amounts of sleep, food etc. 

“I had a crappy day and all I want right now is a glass of wine”

“I can’t believe Brandon broke up with me, I need ice cream” 

Coffee, Bitter and black running down a throat while heels black as her coffee make threatening click clack on the tile of her office in anticipation of a stress filled day. 

An ADHD diagnosis accompanied by a denial of medication while leading to a dependence on Mountain Dew and Monster energy drinks that chew away at stomach linings just as surely as ritalin chews away at personality  

Trolling bars buzzed and horny looking for a one-night stand to forget powerlessness and rejection. Looking for release of negative emotions. Looking for an answer to the question “God, why are you so bitchy? when was the last time you got laid?” looking for something in others that they themselves lack 

Why do we feel the need to self-medicate? Is it that we really just can’t cope with the world around us is it that reality is so painful that we desire and require some form of escapism and change to the norm and harsh truths that fantasy shields us from. 

Video Games, Harlequin Novels, Lord the Rings, Marvel Movies all forms of escapsim and self-medication. 

Humanity requires distraction, but why and what would happen if someone rejected distractions in all her beauteous forms?

"Sit down" she said

"Stop fidgeting" he reminded

"I swear if you don't stop MOVING" they threatened

until one day one didn't

The teacher didn't say "Sit down" or "Stop moving" she said "here, when you get bored or finish an assignment I want you to describe to me what you are going to do on the playground"

This simple kindness to a small hyperactive child turned into teams of paper preoccupation detailing the grand adventures of various heroes, heroines, dragons and ponies as they battled vicious creatures discovered new locales and made friends along the way fostering forever in me a childlike wonder for the magic of the written word.

Nightmares Part 2

When I awoke there were 3 men in the room. They all looked very different: the one closest to the bed had skin like muddy water with eyes the color of a blood moon and longish hair the color of the evil night, he was dressed in a white long-sleeved shirt with a tweed jacket over it, and a pair of bloodstained trousers were barely hanging onto his muscular legs, he had no shoes on, he could not have fit them over his massive paws he had human hands and lupine paws; and a collar that barely fit his huge neck. He was by far the most normal of the three.

The man closest to the doctor had bleached skin as if he was already dead blood was running freely from his eye and nose he had numerous brands on his chest and upper arms his fingertips were claws he wore no shirt and his disproportionate muscles were left for all to see. His pants had gaping holes in them where raw wounds were seeping through the gaps in the material. He wore a belt that was a chain and ran right through his body, held by an unseen force that kept him still as death. He wore shoes but they had holes in them where fur and claw peeked through the stained leather. A dark force surrounded him. The one nearest the door was the most frightening. He wore only a blood-stained loincloth. The parts of his body that were visible under the blood were covered in black, dusty, foggy scales. He had no face, but where it should’ve been was a mask of dripping red liquid that was too thick to be blood but thin enough to drip down to the floor he had no hair and claws for nails he was barely humanoid with no neck and bumps in awkward places. The doctor herself was the strangest person I had ever seen. She had ashy skin and long gray hair it looked like she had turned into ash there was no color in her entire body except for her blood red eyes. She was the most terrifying of the three because it was as if she was a black hole sucking up all life, hope and all things good in this world she was the darkest being I had ever seen. She was alive and not alive she was dead yet she was animated and walking around. She was a terrible puzzle a calamity if you will a person, yet a beast, someone who literally killed the mood and made her own sinister presence felt.

When they approached the bed it felt as if an eternity had passed when in reality it had only been a couple of minutes. The muddy-skin man spoke first; it was as if some of his speech had been removed his voice was a mix of gravel and an avalanche. Then the doctor spoke her voice was lilting and deceivingly contradictory to the words coming out of her mouth

“If you do not cooperate you will be scheduled for immediate termination. I do not care how valuable you are I will; kill you if you decide to rebel.”

I did not reply not wanting to talk to the horrible doctor, not wanting to obey but afraid of rebellion. As they moved closer, the doctor with a journal in hand, a sinister looking device became visible. When the men carried it into view I, at last, realized what it was, it was a suspension device, it was for keeping heavy things in the air for extended amounts of time and often used for torture.

A speech spoken over the body of an enemy

There are things they don't tell you when you are a young bright rebel,

With the taste of wrath in your mouth, a rally cry in your ears, and a mission in your heart.

They didn't warn you of how blood bounces on snow when you are chomping at the bit for action against inaction.

They're stories of glory, not of sweat evaporating before it leaves your skin, never of the smell of blood in a forest cooling on the damp ground. Or the look of an empty battlefield.

But there are good things.

The satisfaction of a job well done, the knowledge that you're saving lives and times, like now, when one finally beheads one of the true evils.

The rush of relief in knowing that the broken bloody mass at your feet will never again cause pain like he once had and that his last moments were ones of misery, misery that you meted out as recompense for his crimes.

They send you out with a sword and a promise that your anger can be used for good and it's moments like this that make good on that promise.

Our righteous anger bubbles like lava, biting at injustice and growling at inaction.

We, the young and restless vibrantly bash against the rocks of tradition. Slowly changing the world, an inevitable tide never coming in fast enough for our liking.

We longed for change, we would burn the world and remake it in our image.

We would kill

We would bite and scratch and tear to protect what we love and seek truth and justice for all.

I walked amongst these thorns along a dangerous road, but I do not walk alone.

We stood and will stand together against conformity, relentless and strange, enigma on a cliff waiting for wings.