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002. Cause/Effect

Today I saw a cat step over a crack
To avoid stepping on a flower. I think that cat was you.

You were the one who offered me lunch that one day in sixth grade
When a girl stole my money for cafeteria food.

Two years later, I heard that you were in Heaven and you were safe--
The woman in the car had tried to save you, but you still walked away from the street

And left your body behind.
I can't pay you back now,

I can never even tell you the truth--
You saved me from myself.

But eight years later, I saw a homeless man digging for cans
And I went into a store and bought him a sandwich.

Two days later, I saw the man petting a cat
And offering it a tiny piece of meat from his food.

Today, I saw a cat step over a crack
To avoid stepping on a flower.

Can you tell me, did you see that?

*note: I wrote this poem about my friend Hallie, who was hit by a car and killed in eighth grade. She never knew that the day she gave me lunch money I was planning to kill myself because I'd been bullied so badly and I thought I had no friends. I couldn't tell her that I owed my life to her essentially, so I tried to show her instead--by "saving" other people. I gave a homeless man a sandwich on a windy day in March, and he was very grateful. I saw him feeding a cat two days later --I don't know if he saw me watching or recognized me, but it felt like he was passing along the care I'd given him to the cat. The rest explains itself.

004. Childhood Memories

The summer ends, we don't know who we are. There are dirt stains on the palms of my little-kid hands, a wilting daisy behind my ear, softness and nothing above me, heaviness and life below. I watch his mother pull the rusty old pickup truck around the bend, feel his breath tickling my ear. He is five years older and wiser than me, and he won't let me forget it. I am nine and I am myself for the last time. "I love you." I whisper. He smiles.

The next thing I know, it is December. The lights are on all over the house and the tree is suffocating under adornments. But there is no light in the room at the top of the stairs. My hands are still pressed into the cold wooden floor. I have to cough, but when I do, there's blood in it. It hot, like anger. Like something I can't feel without flinching as I touch it. My skin feels icy against the merciless truth--he's part of me now, and I never wanted this.

I never said I loved him. I can't have. He does not love. He hurts and he tastes like mean and he is angry. I touch into the wells of my emotions, looking for a memory of love. Of warm dirt and wilting daisies and soft skies. But nothing comes back. I am not me anymore. I do not remember love. Childhood is a memory, and it ended too soon.

Nothing feels warm anymore. Everything is cold. Except that moment when I told him I loved him--that moment is still hot with fury. It is the only reason my blood still runs, the only reason it has not frozen solid. I want to make him pay for what he stole. And someday I will.

006. Mayhem

hear me now. my breath rattles against the bars of my chest, like a storm of the electric air fighting the windows of my soul. my heart is fighting to escape its cage, it is too big for its own home. and restless. it pushes against the wires and cuts itself along the edges, it refuses to be trapped in this cold space between rage and grief, it denies the emptiness of its own home. each fragile moment dislodges from time, a tremble, a sigh, a collapse into the abyss of the past, or a climb into the infinity of uncertain futures.

bittersweet heaviness is the air i breathe, the soft nothingness i cannot bear to deny. it’s a narrow descent from the rattling winter branches to the shadows of what has been forgotten. i forget nothing. but you have left me behind. my half-slumber in the alleys of sun is shattered by the reality, coming apart at the notion of sunset. tell me you haven’t forgotten me, that this cold equation hasn’t cancelled me out, set me away for you to forget. for me to fester in the remains of my life.

these breaths escape me in the painful sighs, and there's a war between my conscience and my heart. if one wins, i lose both forever. chaos is beautiful, but only from a distance--there is nothing beautiful about the girl with her chest ripped open because her heart flew away.

008. First Romance

you approach me
in the landscape of a dream
where we watch

the ghosts of our childhoods
play amongst the clouds
take lessons from the sun

on what it means to be human.
it is there as we watch them,
caught up in their fleeting dance

that you turn and ask me:
"what's a girl like you
doing in a place like this?"

the world begins as a dream.
no matter who you are,
you must dream to live.

perhaps
it will end as a dream,
too. maybe i will as well.

i tell you this, you smile and say,
"are you a dream, then?"
and for once, I have no answer.

010. Disillusionment

A dream dies whenever someone decides that settling for less is better than chasing insanity. This can be a slow death, like a cancerous black thicket that gradually destroys everything it touches. Or it can be a sudden death, the moment you want to wake up but know that, when you do, things will never be the same. It can be a somersault into itself, eating itself away from the inside out. Or it can be at the hands of another, a sphinx of concrete and aluminum that bashes open their skulls and sucks out their imaginations. But every time someone gives up, a dream dies. No matter where you are at the moment of its last flutter, however, it is always the same.

It walks away from the city with only its skeleton; it leaves its skin behind as it tries to make its way back to the unknown land that it calls home. It slowly comes apart as it makes its journey, and it leaves a trail you can follow if you ever want to visit its grave. But no matter how long you live, its skin will always be yours. You will always remember the one you gave up on. You may wonder, "what would have happened?" "what could it have been?" "where would I be now?" You may never know. But sometimes that's the way things are. You just strike another promise and watch it burn until the memories fade away.

Silence is unkind. It is a guest who comes to see you, eats all the food in the house, and refuses to leave. I am the one who you will see digging in the woods on summer evenings, laying a million dreams to rest, as the fireflies mourn with the stars, time unravels at the notion of a future lost, and the birds sing a thousand songs without any words.

You have a definite skill for writing. I won't talk too much in-depth about all of these since you posted so many in one go, but I just wanted to let you know that I read them all and enjoyed them. My favourite so far is challenge number 9. Simple and perfect. I want to do something even smaller than what I wrote yesterday, and I think that your Orchard prompt has encouraged me to try.

This was very touching and heartwarming. Something about men that cry always tugs at my heart heh. You write the emotion really well, and the angel is a really emotional addition.

It really leaves a lot open about their history and who they are, but you know, I'm really, really liking it heh. It's very interesting to think about.