| Ivy: the beginning of a novel |
[December 09, 2008 @ 9:12pm] |
LONG AGO, SOMEONE NAMED THE STREETS OF MY TOWN AFTER IVY LEAGUE SCHOOLS
The flaked-paint post office by the river is on Princeton Street. The dead-end behind the gas station connects to Dartmouth Avenue, across from the church and funeral home. Harvard is the road leading to the lumber yard, in the summers so dusty you can’t see the sunlight or your hands in front of you. No one in Lydison remembers who first came up with the idea, and I always wondered at who, what misplaced dreamer. But when I think of the people in my town, in August afternoons driving slowly from Yale Street to their homes, I imagine them all with white paint brushes and steel plates, dreaming of better houses, better roads. After painting the signs, they named their children Rich, Cash, even Princess, hoping painfully for their sons and daughters what they themselves never had and which in the end would haunt them; when a sink-washed glass shattered on the kitchen lino, when a light-haired girl stumbled on a loose porch plank. When a man died, suffering a stroke on a broken lawn chair on Brown Street. My mother named me Ivy.
MY SIBLINGS AND I ALL ATTENDED THE INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE PROGRAM AT A HIGH SCHOOL TWO HOURS AWAY FROM LYDISON
For my mother, it meant working three jobs to pay the tuition fee and frequently quoting from the IB website that her children would “acquire a high school education of an international standard, recognized at institutions of higher learning around the world”. For me it meant being overlooked by the children of foreign diplomats and hoping the librarian didn’t notice that I ate my lunch behind the biography section. For my sister it meant writing ‘baccalaureate’ twenty-five times on her notebook so she’d remember how to spell it, as well doing her senior year over and over as her not having spoken a word since she was fourteen years old proposed problems for the oral components of her subjects. For my brother, it meant a wide selection of FuFoFems.
FUFOFEM: FUCKABLE FOREIGN FEMALE:
Pronounciation key: [Fu-foe-fem]
Definition: A rare species of female specimen, not of American descent, between ages 16 and 18. Possesses the following traits:
1. A skin tone at least three shades east of mocca beige
2. Dark hair reminiscent in texture of a black silk scarf
3. A selection of stories from her native country, told with an adorable child-like accent, preferably Spanish or Russian in origin.
4. The type of physical beauty which makes people involuntarily swallow their chewing-gum, leave their wives, develop teenage anorexia.
5. An irresistible attraction to the mysterious American boy at their high school who with bedroom eyes and his right hand on his guitar case uses his left to stroke the crease between their collar bones.
6. A malleable outlook on pre-marital sex.
FUFOFEMIZER:
Tom Linden.
MY BROTHER ONLY FELL IN LOVE WITH FOREIGN GIRLS
The South African exchange student. The vice-president of the Latina club. The twin Russian-Italian transfer students (Lita in the spring, Tanya in October). He only loved an American girl once. She was blonde and fair-skinned and born and raised in Maine. At school the seniors said my brother didn’t really date her, only almost; but when she moved back to Maine with her father he kept her picture in the pocket of his favourite jeans and almost broke our drier when he thought mom had washed them. She hadn’t. Once, I picked the picture gently from his pocket. It was not a very good photo of her. You couldn’t see how little her waist was, or the blue in her eyes. She was playing in the winter football field, laughing at something the photographer did. Snow melted on her cheek and in her hair. Her nose was pink from the cold and I noticed that one of her teeth were smaller than the rest. I put my finger on her red coat and wished that she would come back, marry my brother, be my big sister.
MY BROTHER WAS BETTER LOOKING THAN I WAS
He was tall and pale in a good way, the opposite of my pale, and he had dark brown hair that looked like he didn’t comb it, which he didn’t. His eyes looked sleepy, like he didn’t care about anything, which he also didn’t. He sometimes carried his guitar case with his school bag, and the girls at school would slip him glossy magazine looks and when he was standing far away they’d whisper “so sexy” and “he’s beautiful” and “HisNameIsTom,Right?DoesHeHaveAGirlfriend?” The girls at school who normally ignored me all walk up to me and asked me questions about him, and for little moments in their lives, I was important to them. I tried to make the conversation long, make them ask me something about me and not my brother, but they never did. I said Bye Then and Good Luck, even though what I wanted to say was Fuck You and that anything I’d ever noticed my brother do beside bedding FuFoFems was read and reread a battered copy of On the Road, that he had bedroom eyes because he never went to bed and that the only girl he ever loved lived in Maine.
MY START OF SENIOR YEAR STATS
• Name: Ivy Linden
• Age: seventeen, but not a reader of Seventeen.
• Address of permanent residence: The most miserable town in America, (i.e Lydison, PA).
• Appearance: Far from ugly. Far from beautiful.
• Preoccupation: Making constant neurotic changes to her Harvard application, waiting to send it.
• Sexual experience: scarcer than the US petroleum supply.
• Hopes for the future: to get far, far away from the school she goes to, the place she lives in and the people of both.
WHY HARVARD UNIVERSITY?
I’d been pondering what to answer when they ask me this question in the interview. I intended on pointing to the longstanding quality of their English faculty and that my commitment to the English language and its literature was of such immense passion that I saw no other way to turn than to a program which undoubtedly would be able to give me the crème de la crème challenges and quality teaching experiences I so yearned for. But that was of course just bullshit. Why Harvard University? Because it was something that that was “top rated, the best, the bomb”, but yet couldn’t be bought for FuFoFem daddy money.
MY SISTER WAS ALLERGIC TO BEES
She had to carry little needles and fluids in her purse, and if she got stung by a bee, she had to press the needle into the softest part of her wrist without looking away. If she didn’t, she would stop breathing. It would take twenty minutes, and she will stop breathing.
MY MOTHER CRIED WHEN SHE FOUND OUT
The doctor showed Leighla how to put the needle in the liquid cases and how to pinch her skin before pressing it into her wrist. But Leighla shook and almost fainted when someone touched her wrist, and when the doctor said Leighla should try it herself, her eyes flickered and she sat still. After seven tries, she still wouldn’t touch her wrist or look at it. Eyes moist and grey from running makeup, my mother grabbed Leighla’s shoulders. “You have to learn how to do it, Leighla. You have to! Don’t you care? Don’t you care if you die, Leighla?” Her lips were trembling in the creases but Leighla didn’t look at her. The doctor said quietly that maybe if my mother and I stepped outside, Leighla would feel more comfortable. I knew that she wouldn’t be, because Leighla didn’t like to touch her wrist no matter who was watching. Mom was staring straight ahead when Leighla walked out of the doctor’s office, and I noticed but didn’t tell her that I thought she had the prettiest and longest legs of any of the girls in school. My mother asked the doctor if it had worked and he said yes, but he looked at Leighla instead of my mother when she wrote out the check.
SOMETIMES I THOUGHT LEIGHLA DIDN’T CARE IF SHE DIED
My father was a dentist. When Leighla and Tom and I were little, he didn’t allow us to drink soda. He said our teeth would rot away and fall out, and that we needed to realize the importance of taking care of our dentals in the preteen years. When I went to birthday parties, he would stick a yellow or red straw in my backpack along with the gift, telling me to use it so that the liquid touched my teeth as little as possible. I thought it was silly. But the other girls were fascinated by what seemed like my endless supply of straws. When dad left I bought a two-litre of Pepsi and drank it slowly, swirling the liquid around in my mouth. Then I felt so guilty that I threw up, and I cried because I knew stomach acids were worse for teeth than Pepsi was.
SEPERATELY THEY WERE BEAUTIFUL
But sitting by the lake, two pairs of legs, two sets of clear blue eyes, they were breathtaking. In a literal sense for me, watching them watch me ascend and lower my head in the water, up and down in childhood meditation. They smiled at me, like clockwork identical, making me forget for a moment that they were alive, human girls, sun sweeping across bikini bodies, pale skin blending with blonde hair; bright land-mermaids, maybe angels. Gazing, gasping for air, wet hair sticking to my cheeks, I searched in their faces, underwater haunted, wondering where in their bodies they hid the darkness.
MOM SAID WE COULD GO FOR A TREAT, SEEING AS LEIGHLA HAD BEEN SO GOOD AT THE DOCTOR’S
As Leighla didn’t speak, I was the one who got out of the car to get the ice cream. I got us cones of strawberry every time. I didn’t know if strawberry was Leighla’s favorite too, but she always finished it and she kept the pink plastic spoons in a drawer in her bedroom.
THERE ARE A MILLION THINGS I NEVER KNEW ABOUT MY MOTHER
My father told me seven of them before he left. Each moment surprised me, chillingly reminding me of the simple fact that my mother wasn’t always my mother. I froze in wonder each time, mesmerised at the things he casually told me. That she was the prettiest girl in the sophomore mathematics class. That she skipped her classes in Shakespeare Studies to sit beneath the campus birch trees, reading Shakespeare. That she was president of the university’s film noir club. That she hated wearing shoes. That she adored sweets and could at any time be seen balancing a strawberry cupcake or a bag of chocolate cherries on top of her books. That the first time he saw her, she was wearing a bright yellow dress and trying to make a frightened freshman boy sign a petition against increased military spending. That he fell in love instantly.
JESUS WEARS LIPGLOSS AND A C-CUP
I didn’t care about my appearance before I was twelve. I might never have cared at all if it hadn’t been for Melissa, the most glamorous of the Italian girls my brother had bedded since the age of 13. Melissa, Mellie to friends, emerged from my brother’s bedroom a gloating goddess, triumphantly smirking and covered merely by a skimpy underwear set, the color of a freshly fabricated communist flag. She ignored my pyjama-clad self as she slid elegantly into the bathroom, keeping the door ajar as she examined herself in the mirror, not with worry or discontent, but with a certain unconcealed conceit, stretching a gloriously tanned Italian leg across the sink, smearing it glossy with pink lotion. Her eyes caught mine in the mirror. She smiled at me, somehow flashing every tooth in her top row of opaque whites. I believe it was that day I learned the difference between the Heartfelt Impulsive Smile and the Spectacular Joyless Grin. “Come here, little sweet”, she said, her voice implying that yes, she was in fact aware of the endearing quality of her accent. I shyly stepped inside the bathroom and felt suddenly as if we were sharing a secret, she and I, Mellie and Ivy, the belle du jour and the sister debating their viewpoints on the high school legend that was Tom Linden. “You would be so beautiful if you put your hair like this” she said, twirling a lock behind my ear with her slender fingers, sending chills down my spine which for years made me question my sexuality. She placed a pink nail against my cheek. “Will you let me have a moment alone now, little sweet? I’m trying to make your brother realize I’m the second coming of Jesus and have a multiple orgasm before the school bus gets here”. Mellie Schmellie.
I SOMETIMES HAD A DREAM MY BROTHER WAS EATEN BY A BEAUTIFUL BLACK PANTHER AND SUDDENLY THERE WAS ONLY ME AND LEIGHLA LEFT
When they knocked on our door or called, I’d sometimes be rude to them, and then tell my brother that it was the wrong number or a member of Jehovah’s witnesses or a 40-something beer-bellied man selling life insurance. Once, one of the girls came back, and walking to the kitchen, having spent five hours in my brother’s bedroom, she threw me a swift look, tearing open one of the granola bars my mom told me not to eat because they were for Leighla. “You little cunt” she said, her accent making the phrase sound more humorous than cruel. She was 6 feet tall and Russian and so pretty I almost dropped my teacup. Suddenly my brother was standing behind her. “What did you call her?” He was only wearing boxers, black cotton. “What the hell did you call her?” I’d never seen my brother angry before. The baby giraffe supermodel shrunk to the size of a crouching cat. “I was only joking” she said in a whimper, somehow cramming the entire spectre of apologetic tones into four words. My brother looked at her steadily, saying No One Calls My Sister That and a second later she and her purple Prada bag were gone. He didn’t say anything else.
BUT I WAS THE HAPPIEST I’VE EVER BEEN
© Avaleighmarissa 2008
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| Antenna |
[October 07, 2008 @ 9:27pm] |
When I was 13 years old my dad went crazy from his headache and cut off a pallid leg with an electric chainsaw.
I stood in the tool shed, shirtless, the sun glimmering from the cracks in the woodwork to the blue-painted walls. It smelled of summer and saw dust and sweat, lemonade and peeling cabin paint. Dad stood with his feet parted on the ladder, hammering special spikes in the window shutters below the roof, glinting bronze. He picked the studs out from between his crooked smile, one by one, bolting them in precisely with a stern wrinkle between his brows. At the cabin we were men, dad and I, with running sweat and tools in our hands and important tasks, challenges to embark on and conquer. My task was to drill precise little hole in the bronze rectangles dad was attaching to the shutters. I pressed the metal drill sturdily in the soft wood and wondered whether dad had a doctor’s appointment soon, and whether Petra was visiting her aunt on the coast and whether she was fishing for crabs in the Coble with the boy who wore wristbands and had been in the army for a year.
Dad had been in the sun for more than forty-five minutes and his forehead was red. I knew the articles about Ciliary Neuralgia by heart. A doctor with sideburns had corrected me to call them ’cluster headaches’, before describing in cautious detail the rare, but intense pain felt between one or both eyes, sometimes for as much as an hour, often compared to the sensation one would feel if being stabbed in the eye repeatedly with a red-hot metal poker. I think my stomach started hurting when I read about a man who banged his head into his fish aquarium for twenty minutes straight, about another who ripped up his floorboards, and about a woman who shot herself in the head - all to escape the grueling pain. I wrote in my notebook that the condition was sometimes called ’the suicide headache’ and that dad had gotten his first attack the day he turned thirty-three, and that I shouldn’t read articles before dinner.
- Now, let’s see if Kitty will get us some lemonade, eh?
The wrinkle between his eyebrows was pressed in firmer, and I knew he had a migraine. He smiled from the ladder and called for mom.
We drank the lemonade in silence and dad rubbed his sleeve against his mouth as I stood still, a water-beaded moustache on my upper lip. I watched two butterflies resting on a straw, fluttering their wings with lenience, trying very hard at something. Dad walked up the ladder again, tossing three wooden planks down on the grass. The largest butterfly, with wings like little seashells, drifted slowly from the grass, an elegant escape. I didn’t see where the second one went, but I assumed it stayed low, maybe buried under wooden planks. Dad asked me to get the extra handle for the chainsaw, and I quickly rubbed my wrist over my mouth, heading for the tool shed. We had work to do, work to be done precisely, without too many words lingering in the hot air.
I watched dad sweating, beads like melted butter on his narrow heels, the vein above his nose vibrating. I handed him the saw and he pulled the cord roughly. The sharp sound filled the air as dad squinted in the harsh sunlight. Pearls of sweat littered his dark-tanned legs. When mom and dad brought summer guests for a trip in the sailboat, I sometimes heard her laugh and say she was reminded her of the fact that if it weren’t for that they both wore size 9 running shoes, she and dad would never have met. I never got the whole story, but I wished that my legs were as long as dad’s. A twig broke beneath my foot and I looked up.
The smell of grass and something burned and buried butterflies and Petra and the army boy in the boat and dad screaming, getting stabbed in the eyes by a metal poker, but who still had a choice for one and a half second, a choice between a bronze roof and his own flesh, blush-red blood, right before the thundering sunlight prodded everything and a weird thump hit the ground.
I think it was in the white bedroom on the first floor, with a clicking sound like in an old telephone and the stench in my nostrils of disinfection fluid in moistened cotton that I for the first time wondered if it was OK to wish your dad had shot himself in the head on his thirty-third birthday and if long-legged girls in boats could stroke the cheek of boys who could never run in relays.
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| Learning Love |
[October 07, 2008 @ 6:22pm] |
The science of life
The classroom I find you in
Letters can’t write what my heart can, you sing
And shredding bibles of biology
You kiss leniently
Wetly, my little illiterate lips
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| Bella |
[July 10, 2008 @ 8:21am] |
My name is Bella and I'm blonde, but not the beautiful kind of blonde you see in movies about love. More sand-colored, pale like my eyes and skin, like I was born to blend in with off-white bed sheets. And that's what I do most of the time. Blend in, I mean.
My mother was the beautiful kind of blonde. She went to the same high school as I, but when she was there, it said in the yearbook that Isabella Landon was homecoming queen and voted prettiest girl, which is different from what it says about Isabella Landon now.
Everyone wanted to be my mother except my mother. The morning I turned three my father found her on the bathroom floor, little streams of blood trickling from her wrists. He doesn't like to talk about it.
When I was little I used to make-believe she wasn't dead. In my mind she was only away on an airplane, flying to places she'd never forget, working as a model in Milan, an actress in Paris. I cut out glossy silhouettes of magazine women and Marilyn Monroe. I begged the Hitchcock blonde to look behind her. I pretended she was Grace Kelley, an although I was sad she had left me, I understood she would rather be the princess of Monaco than live with me and dad in upstate Oregon.
Sometimes I was mad at my father. I would sit in his lap and suddenly get angry, saying that if he was more handsome or funnier or better at making lasagna, maybe mom wouldn't have gone so far away. I'd stare straight ahead and think I was the most miserable girl in the world while my dad would say 'maybe' in a very low voice.
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| And forever |
[July 05, 2008 @ 10:34pm] |
A moment so beautiful
it makes you not afraid to die
to wither away
and be nothing to no one
because
for a single second
you were everything
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| Lucy |
[July 05, 2008 @ 10:29pm] |
also asleep she was beautiful
a latent obsession
luna light on
long-lit lashes
fleeting like her love
plump, pink
lips like yellow butter
melting slowly, softly
between her
little lusting legs
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| North to the future |
[June 20, 2008 @ 11:26pm] |
I was kicked out of a high school in Alaska and placed in another. A girl with red-scarred wrists and sullen bangs stood pressed against my locker, a jock in battered sneakers roughly making out with her.
I went to lunch with boys who only spoke loudly. I slept in beds with girls who cried when I didn’t call them.
My only friend in Alaska brought me to the high school swimming sectionals. The girl with the bangs stood at the edge of a diving board, nervous and naked except for a too-big bathing suit and white silk ribbons knit above her hands.
My only friend in Alaska said it was time to leave.
I fell in love with the girl with the bangs. On graduation day I told her that I didn’t know her name, but even if it was Cory the cow milker, I still thought she was the most beautiful girl in Alaska. The girl with the bangs kissed me with her hands softly on my collar bones and all of summer she met me by the stream in the woods.
I made love to the girl with the bangs. She stroked my waist, and naked in the sunlight she made me want to be seventeen forever.
She got into college in Connecticut and we agreed long-distance relationships never worked.
I still loved her.
I still loved her.
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| Emmaline |
[May 08, 2008 @ 4:44pm] |
She speaks in italics
softly, like her youngest
eyes in watercolor
in long-lost lyrics
she speaks of broken dreams
she was sports hopes
she was maybe major league
forever fifteen
always ankles gracing
willowed water
grey like her hair
sullen like her skin
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| The Deadly Dragonflies - the beginning of a novel |
[April 20, 2008 @ 8:56pm] |
My name is Harley, like the motorcycles. When I was twelve I made a mixture of aquarium cleanser and hydrogen peroxide, put it in my step mom's Mac ‘N’ Cheese and watched her die.
They tell you committing crimes doesn’t pay off, but that was not at all my experience. In fact, it made me the favorite medical subject and new best friend of circa 40 doctors and med school psychiatry interns, some of them female and quite nice-looking. At least 8 pairs of eyes were at all times jumping up or to the side, attempting to get a look at the personality profile in Dr. Heller’s hands. According to the Millsteen Youth Evaluation Center, I’m a genius. A disliked young man, failing each time with his semi-witty jokes, nicknamed me MC Einstein. Although no one laughed, he was on to something. Even as a twelve-year old named after a vehicle, they all treated me like I was an of authority figure – a stern-faced teacher who’d just caught them cheating on a trig quiz.
Did you know 4 % of the American population is sociopathic, the definition of them being that they have absolutely no sense of conscience? This means that among your friends, relatives, coworkers, classmates, and perhaps even your immediate family, there are most likely at least two or three people who could murder you in cold blood and have not a single sentiment in regard to it except perhaps the annoying fact that there might be blood to wash off their pants. I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that Dr. Heller gave me this diagnosis. It shaped, in some ways, everything that was to come, all the parts people are afraid to talk of now, anyway.
My first day of group therapy consisted of some of the most entertaining hours of my life. There was Larry, the thirteen-year-old rapist, Wentworth, the sophomore strangler, Lily, the wrist-banger/pet-slammer, and a pretty twelve-year-old named Katharine who got a kick out of following her female classmates home from school, trapping them behind a street corner dumpster and torturing them for a few hours with whatever paraphernalia she could fit inside her pencil case.
“All the best cowboys have daddy issues”, said Gregory, a 43 year old therapist, educated at Stanford, PhD in psychology, hair well-groomed to the point of borderline prize pony. “What do you guys think of that statement?” Lily frowned; Katharine planted a pair of clear blue eyes directly on Gregory’s, Larry the rapist parted his lips softly, his nostrils wincing.
Seated in the lunchroom according to therapy groups, I was eerily aware of “The Supervisors”, nine or ten hawk-eyed employees with the license to tase. “Don’t worry”, said the girl named Katharine. “They only use them on you if you’re a very naughty boy. Are you?” She looked at me quizzically, her orange juice straw resting playfully against her lips. I smiled at her. “Depends on who you ask”. Apparently, I was seated at the table notoriously known to belong to The Psychos. It was on the upper scale of the lunchroom hierarchy, rivaled only by the disputably more devious Underage Rapists. You might think Larry, having raped eight girls in his freshman year alone would belong in this category, but seeing as he had also murdered three of them before getting caught, in addition to 'the sociopathic tendencies and disturbing underlying disorders' mentioned in his clinical report, he was given a firm, plastic seat by The Psychos. The lunchroom table hierarchy worked much like it does at any American high school; the more people fear you, the cooler your table is. The Pyromaniacs, for example; their reputation and the fact that with the right equipment, they were likely to burn down the building without further notice, induced a sense of fearful respect. The Cutters, on the contrary, causing little harm to anyone but themselves, had to settle with the one-per-each-cafeteria loser table, its members subjects to comments such as “Miss your razor?” on a daily basis (not notably helping their recovery). The Middle School Alcoholics, The Schizos, The Promiscuous Preteens, The Kleptomaniacs, The Obsessive-compulsives and The Histrionics (representing the majority of the spots in the facility’s recreational drama club) fell into a sort of middle class. For reasons unknown, certain opposite personalities were dubiously grouped together. The Overeaters & Anorexics, for example, caused much tension as their lunch trays differed in size on a scale of 1:10. More mysterious were The Teenage Sadists & Sadomasochists, subject to more than one sex scandal since the center’s founding (but as Lily pointed out, “Whoever grouped the two together is more of a lunatic than anyone in here”). You might think that a cafeteria made up of perhaps the nation’s most devious children wouldn’t need a ‘misfit’ category, but table 14 was indeed composed of them. The Misfits consisted of personalities which didn’t belong in any of the Millsteen center’s groups, including an eleven-year-old kidnapper, a cannibal and an elementary school boy who was convinced he was the reincarnation of Virgin Mary.
In the end, it didn’t really matter which table you were seated at or how crazy you were perceived. Your group members became your friends, and you wouldn’t dream of picking anyone else to contemplate how, in detail, you would torture and then murder each staff member, down to the bright-faced retired woman who once a month volunteered in the laundry room.
It all began the day Dr. Gregory placed a warm hand on Katharine’s knee and told her she was so different from all the other preteens he had dealt with in his career. That’s when we decided to elope. Not even the humanitarian goodhearted ones, the educated empathy-driven fuckers appointed to guide us on our path to righteousness were to be trusted. And this was when we took our place in history. We named ourselves The Deadly Dragonflies. I don’t remember exactly why Katharine insisted on this name, but it had to do with how dragonflies have strong wings although when they fly, they are invisible to the naked eye. Katharine (codename: Glitter Pen, her favorite schoolgirl torturing kit piece) suggested we flee to Mexico. She swore she could seduce the border patrol and that such a matter as getting across was not the issue, whether she needed us to also get some money from their back pockets, was. Wentworth (codename: Saratoga Strangler (tribute, or perhaps resentment towards to his New York hometown) put the pin on the Caribbean. Lily’s codename was Russian Blue, her favorite breed of cats to murder due to the feisty fight they put up before they slowly withered in her grasp, their bulging eyes getting one last look at her wicked smile and the scars they had caused on her wrists. Greg would probably have said that there was a reason Lily wished to identify with the same animal she most enjoyed murdering, but none of us wanted to mention Greg at the time.
Katharine agreed to form our assassination team under the condition that she would mainly be killing women. Lily was all in so long as she would get to murder any or all house pets crossing our way. Larry, of course, demanded he be allowed to have his way with our female victims. I, taking on the codename The Chemist, agreed with Wentworth when he darkly said he was pretty much up for anything.
© Avaleigh Marissa
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| Lucia |
[April 14, 2008 @ 5:07pm] |
Willowed wrists wring
frost-rimmed cupping breasts
gracing fleetingly
her feathery form
swim-stroked
laughter trickling, translucent
luna locusts
faded sunlight
she sways
butter melting
slim-built ankles
supple strides sleight-of-soul
to you, through you
sea-blue malice
searchlight eyes
leniently her lips
grace silently with surges
from the needles which you kiss
water-ghost love
pulls your naked palms to her
she slits.
She cripples softly.
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| Music |
[February 26, 2008 @ 6:14pm] |
Some say it was the song she played, alone with me in the music room, for she was shy. I hardly knew her, yet when she placed her fragile fingers on the keys and played, first softly, I was crushed. It was the most beautiful song written, the notes lenient and long, reminding me of every sad and blissful feeling all at once, and the way it stirred my soul, it was too much, too much.
I was a middle age middle school music teacher the day I fell in love with her, thirteen year old, slim-structured Isabel. From that moment on she owned me, heart and soul, driving me from sanity, ever second since.
I closed my eyes, it was so painful, every key pushed pulling the strings of my heart, the melody a sudden reminder of memories and moments of loss and passion I did not know lived in me. When she pressed the last notes of beauty tears were misting in my eyes and I thought Oh God, I Am In Trouble, and I was. Because from that moment on, as her spine straightened and she looked at me softly, light like the snowflakes falling silently outside the windows, I was hopelessly and unrecoverable in love with her, in love and lost in a small-built breastless girl, a child, they’d later say.
A tall dark-haired man, he said his name was Mark, sat down next to me once with a notebook and asked me questions, talked and took notes, so very puzzled as to why I left my life in shambles over the melody of a lanky, preteen girl. He didn’t understand. It was her fingers on the keys and the music she played that bound me, and I am convinced that had you heard her song, you too would have fallen at her feet, forgetting age and common sense.
Only once did I hear her song. Once and then the half of it, to be fair, for I said again although I could hardly speak, and again she played, shattering me and building me up from nothing with pure scales of highs and lows. Stop, I said, for it was too painful. She did so immediately, her lips parting as she stared at me, scared like a girl wearily standing by a creature with claws, not knowing the beast is more afraid of her than she is of it. Stop, Isabel, stop.
And so only a few scarce seconds did I hear her song, but it was enough to make worth it a lifetime spent waiting for it and a lifetime spent longing for it since.
You don’t want to hear it? She spoke softly, her voice small and unsure. My fingers trembling, I gazed at her feathery form, wanting nothing more than to say I want to hear everything play, yet I didn’t. Instead, I asked her questions, insignificant questions asked only to hear her voice, also melodious. Name: Isabel Lena Sawyer, Isa to friends. Twelve years old, youngest of three siblings. Likes blueberries, doesn’t like peanut butter sandwiches. Then, all of a sudden, laughter. I don’t remember what I said to induce it, but little bubbles of mirth trickled from her throat, her cheeks a pallid pink, pale winter sunlight resting in her hair. It was so beautiful it took my breath away, and parting my lips, I was so in love the way only men of old age can be, knowing very well lenient young girls are no longer for their eyes, but perhaps even more so, that childhood is long lost.
Mesmerized by her music and her mood, mermaid-like in how she moved her hands, I did not notice what she used them for was closing her book bag, the ringing of a bell somewhere in the room. No, I wanted to say, closing the doors and windows, capturing her for me to hold and hear play forever. Yet I sat frozen and did not understand such a lovely being was moving away from me or that she had been in the room in the first place.
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| Trees |
[October 02, 2007 @ 5:39pm] |
In the winter, when the trees for the first time withered and went frail, her eyes turned to a starchy emerald green and the skin around her eyes grew pale and she was ill. When the gardener disappeared, only to sit at sunset with his face buried softly in his wife's golden hair, Linnea's heart shattered like it did at the sight of the trees when the sharp august pink floated behind them. When the garden had gone untended for a year and the twigs she adored broke off at the slightest touch of her softly pink fingertips, she decided to go to bed.
Young girl tears trickled softly down the side of her wooden bed as she watched the withering of the trees. Everything good she knew was of branches and solid breathing twigs; her pencils and the notebooks where she wrote the stories that came flowing complete from beginning to end into her head. She closed her eyes at the sight of herself softly leaning a rosy warm cheek against a placid branch by sunrise.
Everything she knew that was not good was stuck inside a black box of steel and metal and a glass window showing images of clouds , grey dust and machines, dirt-green clothed men from distant countries. When she turned 14 she realized she loved trees more than she loved humans. She saw deep red blood flowing from the chests and skulls and did not flinch. She saw a silent blazing fire shatter giant Magnolias in a foreign gold-green forest and her eyes went to deep emerald. She left the silent man and woman she didn't know sitting by the steel box as she went up the white spiral staircase to lie quiet and heartbroken with her pale-pink fingertips pulsating softly against her wooden bed.
When she turned 22 and her hair fell in cascades down her soft-skinned back and the sight of her slender body in an ivory silk dress caused a widening of pupils and heavier breathing in the afternoon streets she crossed, her heart had been broken many times by sugar maples in sharp pink sunsets, never by boys or men.
All the trees in the garden were withered and on a frail November morning after long weeks of disease she decided the dying trees would no longer cause her body to shatter and grow pale. She took a dust-black train to a city of metal and pavement. She bought shoes with steel-embedded heels that made her look tall, she bought a toaster and a coffee machine that made a loud beeping sound when her morning drink was ready to be poured into a porcelain mug. She slept at night, sometimes with men in dark blue ties who told her they were aiming for something in cold-grey beds with clean white sheets. When she woke in the A.M. with a soft Good Morning Beautiful whispered in the shell of her ear, she knew that as soon as he went to make her breakfast she would walk with silent strokes of her feet to the door.
After drinking her morning coffee from her ornate porcelain cup, she put her hair up with a brass pin and spent the day typing with coral rosy fingertips, letters to people she'd never meet, for a lady with frosted hair and a red suit she would never understand. Every time her calender showed a large blue 1 under a picture of a larger steel building in a city, a letter arrived at the hard doorstep she would hit her toes on, saying a certain number of a value was hers, hidden in a brick building without windows.
On Saturdays she went to the largest building she had ever known, bought little bottles of pink liquid in a velvet glass box and polished it on her nails until they shone. She painted her eyelashes black and ran her fingers through her hair. In the nighttime she went to little dark rooms where everyone danced. Men in shiny black shoes bought women drinks and put their hands on their waists. She sat silently in glass apartments with a view of neon lights and yellow steel cars pulsing through paved stone streets where no one went to sleep. Men with dark blue ties and wine they said was many years old caressed her breasts and let out soft moans when she gently touched two fingers to their collarbones.
She went on a plane to Tokyo with a blue-tie man whose shoes were shiny and black and who stared at her hair as she pretended to sleep and her eyes drifted leniently over the never ending blue sea below.
In Tokyo there was no green. Cars, buses and steel glass buildings surrounded her everywhere she went or raised her eyes to look. The man with the shimmering black shoes took her to restaurants they needed elevators to reach. Her blood froze inside her as the escalating mechanisms showed her one hundred buildings, windows, lights and cars in less than seconds through the frosted glass. She was slightly dizzy when the man took her arm and walked proudly, or maybe timidly, through rows of linen-dressed tables with little silver forks and polished knives. She at first didn't understand when he pulled from his left dark blue suit pocket something oval and of steel with a little stone glimmering almost like the neon lights nauseating her as she gazed out on the city view.
She was married in a white dress with little bronze pearls in her hair and moved with the pair of shiny black shoes to a large city apartment with glass windows in metallic frames. She bought a new coffee machine and a wispy pale white orchid that died after four days. Black shiny shoes looked at her tenderly and asked her if she wanted to have a child with him. She gazed back at him with dreamy clear green eyes and three years later she had four children.
She was thirty-two and sat quiet in her steel glass apartment, staring at her coffee maker, her face pale blanch, still beautiful. She pushed, suddenly, her chair away from the cold table. She pulled with pallid wrists the thin synthetic shirt and fabric underwear off, away from her skin and crept silently onto the floor holding her arms softly around her waist, leaning her cold pink cheeks against the wood, her nose leniently breathing in the most familiar scent. Her youngest daughter came home from school and stared for little minutes at the only woman she had ever known. The child began weeping and the woman stood up and made her daughter a bowl of cereal. Her husband got home from work and she asked him if they could redo the floors. The year she turned thirty-three the floors were carpeted and smelled of woolen fabric.
She turned forty and her husband threw her a party in a large uptown apartment in the building of his company. A tree brought in from New Zealand stood in the corner of the city view window. Loquacious voices growing faint, she went slowly over to it, idly caressing the lenient leaves and the steadiness of the wood. She let her frail fingertips run across the wispy green, taking in the scent of young girl feet and soft warm cheeks leaning against a giant maple and knowing it was life. Her chest began to hurt as though something inside her shattered, her waist sweeping the mellowness. Her thoughts turned bland and velvety and when she opened her eyes she noticed the ceiling was blue and ten or fifteen unfamiliar faces were staring at her with worrisome looks.
She went to work. The red suit lady touched her collar bone and asked her what she was going to do with little fragments of time she told her she had saved. She looked out to the pale white outside the windows and a week later, her husband smiled watching her slip bathing towels into a brown-handle bag, carrying it softly on her wrist as they boarded a plane. She let her fingers rest carelessly on the skin of her thighs, breathing in soft sleight-of-sleep rhythms, gazing with pale eyes to the still blue water. She watched her daughters, light wavy locks sweeping their necks, soft transparent-skinned creatures she didn't know. They smiled at her, waving, swirls of sand embracing their ankles as they ran laughing, sunbeams swimming smoothly through their hair. She rested her head against a beautiful coconut tree and while passing out, she remembered before closing her eyes that the red suit lady probably wanted her to sit by the black desk again, and that she should go back.
She went to work, went home, went to dinner, went to sleep, went to work. She worked longer, went home faster, canceled dinner, didn't sleep. Red suit lady led her to a square grey metal room with sharp edges and told her that the amount on the piece of paper in her dark green mailbox would be bigger when the wooden forest house on her calendar flipped and turned to hillside landscapes. She didn't sleep and her daughters looked at her with worry in their frost-blue eyes. She went to work and went to bed and didn't sleep. She fixed her gaze at the cool steel alarm clock, her skin growing pale. Black shiny shoes put his arm around her, asked her what she needed. She shivered and closed her eyes. On a cold February morning, little snowflakes frosting pieces of her skin, she went silently out to her balcony, frail wrists pushing the glass-door open. She remembered, suddenly what she needed, smiled and let go, drifting to sleep.
Her eyes went to a clear wide emerald and she felt the air brush softly around the skin on her shoulders. The sun was setting, casting yellow reflections of daylight over the lenient leaves of the honey crisp trees. There were hundreds of them, silver green oval droplets resting on a supple curve. She let her feet slip silently from her shoes and felt for the first time in too long little green strands teasing the creases between her heels. Her wrists were weak and light and the thin linen dress caressed softly her waist as she walked into the field of trees. Lucid fingertips went smoothly to the rough, the touch sending little vibrations along her neck. The sun descending coral-glazed behind the hillside, she pressed her cheek softly against the sturdy frame, a throbbing filling her chest as the most basic of scents filled her nostrils once again. Breathing in the wooden air, she placed her wrist beneath an arched droplet curve, sensing with eyes closed, thin sunlit softness sweeping her skin. She pressed her lips together, letting them lift apart as she brushed her waist against the wood, the last sunset beams on resting mellow eyes. Little strings of every feeling bonded at the touch of a tiny curved crease in the wood, a surging in her heart as a coral finger filled it, and with the softest movement she rested a soft rosy cheek against the green.
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| Salvation |
[October 02, 2007 @ 5:37pm] |
Sometimes, when she was out on a cornfield, or just any wide, open area, she felt like flying. Especially if the sun had gone down, and the air was a bit windy. August was the worst month. She would be walking down the road to the door of her father’s house, and all of a sudden, while looking out on the wide lonely landscape, something slowly bursted inside. August sunsets are softly pink with a sharp red floating in the horizon. Lying alone in the cornfield, stretching her wrists up towards the the deep red, she felt superior. Superior as she was the only one one who could ever truly understand the colours. Something escaped from her every time she’d watch an August sunset. She didn’t know exactly what it was that disappeared, but she knew that it was important and that she needed it.
The sun had never heated the little town more than it did that summer. A soft breeze swept across the large cornfields, moving through the landscape, decreasing as it found it’s way into the almost deserted streets. Sweeping the warm bodies walking slowly to the small and only supermarket for milk and fresh-picked strawberries, it embraced tiny carvings in old trees and benches, sighing softly as it went through the dry leaves. A young girl felt the wind sweep her skin and thought to herself she should buy a rose.
Lienna liked the way he timidly looked at her resting body, staring at her legs and arms with his mouth slightly open. She liked seeing how he got perplex and nervous as she didn’t say a word, intensely and carelessly gazing into his eyes, ridiculing him. He looked uncomfortable where he was standing, slowly bending his foot back and forth in the dry dirt, his eyes flickering slightly. She rested her arm on her stomach, breathing calmly, and spoke in the softest child-like voice; “Do you find my legs attractive?” The sunbeams felt relaxing on her face. “No,” he stuttered. “I mean – yeah – or ”. He removed some thick brown hair from his forehead, closing his mouth, swallowing. He told her his name, and she remembered thinking ‘Alex’ was a little boy’s name. But she liked the way his lips silently repeated `Lienna`.
She was lying in the cornfield, resting, catching the sunbeams of the warm june-day. Her body was still and sleep induced, wrists revealed, like a tired child after a day of too many new impressions. Lienna found it calming lying there, concentrating on not making a single movement as the beams swept her skin, finding their way underneath her white top and jeans, cut short for the summer. She closed her eyes slowly. Other girls would call her asocial, for never talking, and always walking by herself. Lienna didn’t care. They never understood what it’s like feeling the way she did; careless and calm, with her hair softly on her shoulders, barely sensing the small vibrations in her wrists.
Men stared at the thin cotton skirts around Lienna’s moving hips, her soft pink fingertips stroking her waist as they turned their heads slightly watching her cross the street. Most girls would probably be bothered or find it repulsive, but in some way, she liked it. How their longing eyes discretely pierced through her tops and skirts, their breaths just a little heavier in the summer heath, before finally realizing they were 40 years old and so were their wives. They knew they could never have her, and this gave her an immense power. It was written all over town, in public restrooms, carved into trees and benches; sexual and sometimes sweet words combined with her name. Lienna felt a tiny rush every time she saw one of these little notes. She assumed she should have gotten upset or felt like it was her fault, for having dressed or acted inappropriately or something, but she loathed these feelings. Lienna thought to herself they’d never truly understand what shame was, though she knew men would always feel it over the way they secretly wanted her.
While men longed for the green-eyed girl, girls hated her. Once, Neava Dary walked up to Lienna and told her she and the other girls were sincerely worried about her. Apparently, Alison Measly’s mom had told her daughter girls like Lienna Wanton should cover up, otherwise they might get inappropriate attention from older males, and that it would be primarily their fault if they got raped. Neava also said the girls prayed for her every night, along with the minister and the rest of the congregation, and if she wanted to, Alison and Cathy would love to braid her hair. Neava smiled sweetly and her bright blue eyes were filled with the kindness they usually were.
Lienna’s body always felt like sleeping, and it was as if she was on some wonderful drug keeping her in a constant state of uncaring mellowness where nothing excited her. Others would never understand how when she was asleep, that was when she truly lived, dreamt. Awake, she was simply resting, waiting for the moment she could cross into blissful calmness. If they’d only known how good it felt, not having to care, not having to live. She read this poem in a library book once, she couldn’t remember it, but it was beautiful. There was a stanza, it ended with “as I myself set the scene for mellow unwind of body and mind”. Lienna had drawn little roses and a girl at the bottom of the page.
Even though his mouth was closed, his eyes didn’t move from her body. Alex kept on staring, not knowing if he should or shouldn’t as Lienna mobilized her hand, softly moving her fingertips back and forth, first touching her jeans pocket, then all the way up from the side of her stomach, winding up playing with a loose thread in her top. He followed the movements of her fingertips; jeans pocket, skin, top, slowly. He made a noise, as if he wanted to say something, but decided he wouldn’t. She liked the sound, especially the second time he made it, right before speaking. “Why are you lying here?” It probably took him a great deal to say this, and he seemed as if proud of himself. “Well, why are you standing there?” Her fingers felt soft on her skin. “Cause-... He removed the hair from his forehead again. “you’re lying there”. She felt like smiling, reaching out her left hand, staring him straight in the eye. He was insecure on what to do, and his thumbs were flickering slightly, but the steady firmness of his hand in her’s did something to her.
An elderly man, he said his name was Greg, sat down next to her once. He asked her questions, talked and wrote. He said she used sexuality to achieve approval and power, and that she preferred the company of boys rather than girls her own age because of the absence of a satisfying father figure. She laughed and stroked a soft hand slowly against the side of her thigh.. He asked if she had ever experimented with drugs or alcohol and whether or not she was even still a virgin at her young age. He told her she had put up a wall to block out any feelings, good or bad. He kept mentioning her father and she remembered him asking her something about the blue flower vase in her bedroom window. “You have your entire life ahead of you, Lienna, I hope you know that”. When she didn’t say anything, he got agitated and told her she wasn’t doing herself a favour by never opening up to anyone.
As she was lying quietly in her bed, feeling the softness of the old yellow blanket slowly putting her to sleep, Lienna realized how vulnerable her skin felt. She lifted her ring finger and softly, while breathing through her nose, she touched the inside of her wrist. She pushed the slender finger back and forth, intensifying her eyebrows, trying to figure out something. Suddenly, with a gasp, she pulled her wrists up close to her body, pressing her pink lips together, desperately trying to gain control of her breath as she rubbed her feet rapidly against the sheets. Pushing her wrists up against her chest, protecting them, Lienna closed her eyes, not allowing herself to cry. She lay curled up like a ball, protecting all vulnerable spots on her body as her irises went to a deep shade of green. Her muscles softened and she slowly began breathing steadier as a sense of safety came over her, holding her arms around her upper body like a mother protecting her child. On the floor, in contact with the yellow blanket, was something red and beautiful, more tender than the tip of her finger.
The young boy was about to help her up when she suddenly pulled him down towards her, their faces inches apart for a few seconds, feeling each other’s breath. Then Alex’ body fell over on the side, next to hers. If he had been any other boy, any other boy in all of town, she would have been playing softly with his belt buckle by the time his body had reached the ground. But Lienna simply looked at him, studying his boy-like features; sharp nose and soft lips. He was nervous, and the way she intensified her eyebrows, staring at his lips, made his eyes flicker, made him unsure of where he should rest his hands. After a while, he calmed down, breathing steadier. “Do you usually lie out here all day?” He bit his lip slightly after having said it, constantly aware of how he was unable of uttering a satisfying sentence. Her lips, in a darker shade of pink than his, softened into a smile. He smiled back, relieved, but still tensed. “It’s relaxing”. He nodded; “I think I’d be kinda bored, though, lying out here all day, just – not that I think it’s boring – it’s – “ He bit his lower lip again, and Lienna looked away, her body still turned towards him. “Meet me here at seven unless you have something better to do”.
She lifted the beautiful object from the vase at the exact same time as the man shut the door behind him. A glimpse of wavy dark hair in the distance danced before her eyes before disappearing as the road made a left. Green eyes went pale. The fragile object felt heavy in her hands as she slowly walked towards her bedroom, pink dark-shaded lips quivering slightly.
The night was warm and mellow, and she blushed slightly as she felt the innocent tenderness of the young boy’s fingertips on her cheek. Every movement caused crispy noises as the huge straws broke, and they were both gasping for air after having run as far as they could into the cornfield. He was insecure and nervous as ever, but somehow, he dared making himself vulnerable, touching the surface of the most beautiful girl he had ever known. Lienna could never do that, but she did do something she hadn’t done before; as he childlike and calmly rested his hand on her shoulder, she looked him in the eyes. Not daring or provocative, but soft and playful, with naked eyes and separated lips, her breathing a bit faster than usual. His skin smelled of boy, and she rested her head on his shoulder, trying to steal some body heat. Alex tried gaining control over his breath and body, but he still couldn’t believe this beautiful creature was actually resting in his arms, breathing in rhythm. Her skin smelled of girl.
A young girl’s tears fell to her white dress. They tasted salty on her lips. The curtains were closed, but it was sunny outside as she held in her hand something more alive than her. A small red heart was slowly shaped on the thin silk as she rested her wrists, the second one forming as a flash of raven black hair ached in her mind. It hurt, it always hurt, but this time something was different. The air in her childhood-bedroom was hot and too dry to breath in. Little dust dots twinkled in the pale light. He had left his hat, she saw, as she pressed a little harder.
That night, while the sky was inexplicably clear and filled with stars, he rested his hand softly on her waist, trying to see if he could get to heaven through the green in her eyes. Suddenly, Liennas soft breath felt like it was going to choke her. She grabbed his T-shirt with her fragile hands, pulling her body closer to his. She didn’t stop until she was pressed up against him, feeling the soft skin and breathing in his scent. He didn’t understand, but as she couldn’t answer him when he asked her what was wrong, he simply wrapped his arms around her, resting his hands on her shoulders. He whispered her name and told her it was OK, but he felt a girl’s tear landing on his bare shoulders, sending a shiver through his body. Her arms slowly lost their strength, and her tensed legs were starting to relax as she felt his hand on her back.
The sleeping beauty was still lying in his arms, sometimes making little sounds or hand-gestures while off somewhere in her dreams. The thought of ever having to get up seemed distant as he wrapped his jacket around her bare shoulders and pulled himself a little closer to her, stealing some body heat. Alex had never felt so close to a girl. He rested his face near hers, checking if the smell of her hair might invite him into her dreams. He thought about touching her, just to know how she felt. Her skin was soft and warm as he loosened the left strap of her top with gentle caring fingers. The soft, heavy breathing indicated that she was still sleeping. He touched her face to see if she would react. Lienna’s shoulders were as fair-skinned as her face. He slipped his fingers a little further down, and noted that her bra had little blue hearts on it. A pair of awake green eyes stayed shut as her other strap was gently released.
A mother kisses her little daughter gently on the cheek. She tells her child she must leave, but if she’s a nice little girl, mommy will come back soon. The child understands and she promises, and she doesn’t cry. Crybabies don’t get to go see mommy. Her father grabs her shoulder, and she wishes she could tell mommy her secret. “Mommy!” The train is slowly starting to move as the child screams again, her face dreaded in desperation. Her mother is wiping her tears with her handkerchief, smiling bravely at her daughter. Daddy grabs her by the shoulder again. Crybabies don’t get to go see mommy.
She kissed Alex on the lips with the gentleness she was once taught. He smiled in his innocent, boy-like way. The straps on her top were resting on her shoulders, just as they were when she had first put them on. Lienna arched her back as she got up, not touching her knees. She walked across the cornfield, a sense of nausea rising.
The glass bottle felt soft and cold against her skin, and sensing the cool wind blow her hair back, her frozen hands shivering, she could feel it. For the first time in a short life-time, she could feel her life wrapped around her, spinning inside as this gentle stream of sincere feelings. All the strings. The thought of having considered letting them have that release suddenly seemed absurd. They deserved something different, a punishment they’d never get, and she knew this as she smiled with glazed eyes. Everything was so simple, and she understood what it was really like to finally sleep after having stayed awake, feeling and breathing for way too long. It hurt. The pain thrilled through her body, along with the tenderness of blue glass against naked skin while the thorns carved into a lower point on her hand, the soft red flirting with young skin. A few moments in heaven. Then sleep. Her head fell to the soft ground with a weird thump, a child’s eyes closing in the dark.
Alex didn’t understand when he found the red rose resting next to her body, softly sweeping her wrist. No one ever really understood. Except maybe Greg when he found a photo album belonging to Mr Wanton. Or perhaps was it even a few days before, when he accidentally stumbled upon an old library book Lienna had forgotten to return. He remembered thinking she was a good drawer. Although he didn't cry before he found her father’s hat on her night-stand, the bed freshly made with pink sheets.
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