Shoelaces

shoelaces

toes

feel the sand beneath

your fingertips

brush gently across my skin

shifting underneath me

inside of me confuses

death from life

a cacophony of 

emotion

floods the

emptiness within

my soul

caved in by

the vipers

wrapped around my toes

tying me to the ground like

shoelaces

Repurposing

I've always been a writer. Since I can remember, I've written short stories, character descriptions, observation journals, and everything in between. There are notebooks from elementary school filled with fantasies adventures with my imaginary friends. As you can imagine, journals dating back to first grade add up to potentially thousands of written creations. Right now, these thousands are scattered on various lined papers, google documents, memos on my cell phone, and printed English assignments. I've decided that I'm going to try to organize them in one place. Here.

This blog was originally created for my creative writing class senior year of high school. Since I graduated, this website has been growing cobwebs. All my poems live in the margins of my lecture notes and short stories reside on the backs of scripts. The chaos of my life that I try to decipher by writing is haphazardly strewn through my belongings. I'm not going to stop writing blurbs on my napkin in the coffee shop, but I am going to try to transfer them here when I'm done. Organized chaos.

No one's probably gonna read this blog, and no one needs to. This blog is mostly for me. It's a way to put my writing out into the universe so I'm not hoarding it all inside myself, but also not on a flashy amateur publishing site. I have stories on Wattpad for that purpose. This is for everything else. My soul is here in the most profound, disturbing, and cheesiest ways. If your eyes happen upon this blog, I hope you find inspiration in the words I write.

Love,
A Wanderer

This is...

This is a little girl in a little pink dress
Smiling as if her life depended on it
Happiness alight in her bright blue eyes
Her hair glows in the summer sun
As she sits on the wooden porch steps

This is a dog as big as a bear
His solemn expression a stark contrast to her smile
Floppy ears flat against his fluffy head
Dark eyes always watching
Making himself her protector

This is the sweetest of friendships
Blurring the line between beings
When a child sees, not a dog, but a brother
Closer than any two humans could be
The purest of loves

This is a happiness
The innocence of childhood
Remembering when he was here
And not that he is gone

Photos of the Millenium: Lost Brother

Numbly, I drove, my heart knowing the destination before my mind could figure it out. I parked in the near empty lot and exited the car, keys jingling in my hand. The guards at the gate nodded, letting me enter without question. They knew me here. It isn't a very great place to be known, but at least they don't ask questions anymore.

I wandered through the lawn. All the stones are identical, but I know where his is. I don't even stop to read before I fall to my knees in front of it. My keys fall uselessly to the grass as my hands go limp in my lap. I don't even want to look up, but I do. Frail arms lift my trembling hands, and I stroke the engraving with my fingertips as my eyes blur the words before me. "I miss you," I croaked breathlessly. I miss him more than words can say.

I blinked and saw the procession; his casket blanketed by the American flag, men in uniforms that had served alongside my brother but met a better fate. I blinked and saw the uniformed men at our front door, giving me a letter in his place. My mother stumbled to the couch, hand over her mouth as I stood in disbelief, wishing it was a dream. I blinked and was sitting on the floor in my bedroom, back against my bed, reading one of his letters from the shoe box I kept under my bed. The last letter he ever sent me. There it was, clear as day, the promise he made to me that he didn't know he wouldn't be able to keep. I love you. I'll see you soon.

I curled up against the grass by his tombstone, pressing my face against the cold ground, my fingers digging into the dirt in an attempt to get closer to him. I let my eyes flutter closed as memories of him danced before me. His arms wrapped tightly around me, holding me close to him. The both of us wrestling over a candy bar in the living room. In the airport, when he kissed my forehead and I waved as he walked away, not knowing it was goodbye for good.

My fingers brushed the base of the cold stone as tears formed a pool beneath me. I'll see you again someday.

Music Freewrite

She dances across the floor
Feeling the music, letting it become her.
Her hair whips as she spins
Her dress flies about her
Bare feet on the wooden stage
She strikes her final pose.

Breathless. Satisfied.
But he is not
Again, he yells, again
Again she flies across the floor
Leaping, spinning, twisting, lunging
Reaching for perfection
But he is not satisfied.
She dances until her dress is torn
Her makeup smudged and her muscles sore
But he pushes her back down.
She will never be good enough
Yet she continues to dance
Sighing when her dress brushes her legs
And her bare feet hit the wooden stage
Trying to free herself

Lyric Shuffle Poem

*inspired by Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud*

It's just one of those days
When her heart was stepped on and shattered
And she didn't quite know how to put it back together

She had half a mind to leave
To run away and never return
But she stayed
And let her heart continue to break

She just wanted to be loved
But he loved her too much
It smothered her
It suffocated her
And she didn't know how to fix it

Her eyes still smiled
But her soul was shattered
Her legs wouldn't work like they should
They ran toward the pain
To save him, she sacrificed herself
She tried to stop loving him
But he couldn't
He would never stop loving her

His love stole the hope from her soul
The breath from her lungs
The light from her eyes
Was gone

Just Another Nightmare

I bolted upright, startled awake by another nightmare. I gasped for breath, blinking in my surroundings, reminding myself of where I really was. Biting my tongue to keep from screaming, I tugged my knees up to my chest. The images played over and over in my head, no matter how hard I wished them away. Over the summer, the nightmares have become slightly less frequent, but haven't disappeared completely, and I've kind of accepted that they never will.

This one was a lot like all the others. I was stuck in the dungeon, that tiny, square, cement room that was my prison for weeks. I knew every detail of it by now: each tiny crack in the walls, the frigid temperature of the unforgiving floor beneath me, the single dim light bulb that rested in the center of the ceiling, and, most importantly, the metal slab of a door that had no handle, keeping me trapped. 

Like in every other nightmare, it felt as if I had never left. Like I'd been in this hellhole for ages, waiting to be rescued. But no one ever came for me.

This time, when he came in, I didn't look at him. I didn't have the will to. Everything in me was tired. Dead. Used to be that my heartbeat picked up speed whenever I heard noises by the door. My hands would get clammy and I would struggle to breathe. Now, it hardly affected me. It was inevitable. I knew I couldn't control it. I couldn't control anything. All I've done for the past, God knows how long, is sit against this cement wall on this uncomfortable cement floor and wait. And be beaten. Hit and kicked and...touched, over and over and over again. Then watch him leave and try to keep breathing until he returns. 

The masked man paced the room. I tried not to feel every bruise on my body. I tried not to feel my shattered ankle scream every time I fidgeted. I tried not to anticipate the bruises that were to come. Briefly, I spotted the knife hooked in his belt. I prayed for a quick visit this time. I hoped it would be a chat, slice, and leave. He'd done that once before. Or twice, I can't quite remember. 

I was almost right. I looked up just as he expertly whipped out the knife and, in one swift movement, stepped forward and slashed my arm. I stifled a scream. He chuckled and slashed the skin over my collarbone. I screamed through my teeth as the blood began to flow down my chest, soaking my shirt. 

"Show me your pain!" he shouted, towering over me.

"Show me your face!" I yelled back, lifting my face to look at him again, showing no fear. 

He froze momentarily. Then, he resumed twirling his knife in his fingers. He studied the swirling blade, then looked down at me. He stopped the knife, gripping it like he was going to stab me with it. My breath caught in my throat. He leaned down slowly, until his face was inches from mine and his foul breath floated across my face. I tried to turn away but his rough hand on my jaw held me there. As he breathed heavily on me, my lungs refused to operate. It's not real, I kept telling myself. It's not real. It's not real. And I pretended it wasn't real. Even though it felt more real than reality.

His eyes - those dark, evil, horrid eyes that haunted every moment of my existance - bored into mine. He peered into my soul and attempted to wither it away. I fought against him with every fiber of my being. My body was still, but my insides were on fire, twisting, turning and fighting.

Suddenly, a pain hit my thigh and spread through me. I assumed it was the knife; until I was sent into spasms. My entire body, inside and out, convulsed uncontrolably. It writhed and burned, throbbing with every movement. I was held up only by his hand on my jaw. All I could see, all I knew in that last moment, were his black, soulless eyes.

Then I was gasping for breath, my frail limbs all wrapped up together, taking up barely any space at all. I focused on my walls, the bed underneath me, my nightstand, my pillow, anything that would remind me that I am here, home. And I was thankful. Thankful that I am here, not there, and that it was just another nightmare. But as I sat, all tangled up in myself, fear reminded me of its presence in my heart. I was afraid to blink, because every time my eyes close, I see his.