Linger, Part One.

And that was the last time I saw him. Without notice, without warning, and without a goodbye. He was stolen from existence, captured by fate's greed and destiny's confusion. He was taken from the world, but he was not gone.

I woke up in a sweat that morning, not as if this was much of a surprise, my dreams always shook me. I felt a quake of him, his arms, his eyes, his voice, travel through the air, searching for somewhere to settle. He settled into me, my existence.

The dim light selfishly fished its way through each strand of the curtain who desperately tried to block it out. The melon glow filled my room as if the curtains were transparent. I always meant to get rid of those things.

My will to move, breathe, see, feel was buried with him. He took all of me, he stole my innocence, my happiness, my eternity. It was up until the sun struck my sheltered eyes that I was blind to the impact that he had on me. Now that it was exposed, I hated him for it. I hated him for being so selfish, for letting himself go, for not fighting his soul from lifting. I thought that I at least would have acted as a weight upon his conscious...

I always seemed to get lost in my thoughts these types of mornings. I've developed a considerably adequate remedy- shake it off. Like a dog emerging from water, seizing each jem-like bead off of it's skin until it merely forgets its swim in the first place; until I forget my past in the first place. It isn't exactly as effective as I like to pretend it is, but pretending is half the battle, the other half is unspoken.

I open my eyes, but I don't see. I feel a numbing wave over me, I imagine that day, the last day. The shadow of a passing car crawls across my ceiling. Who else in their right mind would be awake this early. Maybe they're empty too, maybe someone was stolen from them too. The clock reads 6:04 and the illumination of the numbers are imprinted in my sight. The wall read 6:04, the quilt read 6:04, when I closed my eyes his face read 6:04. Until those three numbers were adjusted out of my view it was as if it would stay 6:04 forever. Until I looked back and corrected myself. 6:07. Time waits for no one.

Maybe I'm selfish for letting his death take me, but I can feel him in question. That's the only think I feel anymore. I can feel the air around me but I can't catch my breath. I can feel the water rising, but I don't want to emerge. The weight that ticks inside of me pulls me down, down, until I hit the floor. I'm watching myself drown, but I am calm. I let the current thrash me opened, I let the salt creep in and I let myself feel. I wake up again. 6:12. Time is trying to be clever with me.

"Hush littler girl, don't let yourself fall."
His voice as real as it could ever be anymore.
The covers hide his face and allow me to see him there, laying next to me. I hear myself speak for the first time in my life,

"Where do you linger now?"
"Hush little girl," he responds.
"Are you my spirit?"
"Don't let yourself fall." he repeats.
"You can't restrict me for long, I'll join you soon," and I was convinced that I would.
"I don't want you here," he said. And he was gone.

Please, lord, please emerge me from this darkness into the light that I know exists beyond.

Nothing to say.

I'm uninspired to write today, which I consider worth documenting.

ycfmtt.

Conversations behind a closed door. Fleeting thoughts behind a closed mind. I've been told speak, open my mouth and just let my voice take over. But is it really that simple? Maybe to them. But not to us.

S.F.

I have a friend. Nine years ago, you would have found him and I, living in two separate worlds, but one alike. You would have seen us competing in field day, kicking home runs at the weekly Friday kickball game or lined up outside of school waiting for our day to start, waiting for our lives to begin. Without a care in the world, our innocent eyes wandered through a world that had nothing to offer us but a harsh reality that we wouldn't stay those two little kids forever; and we were unaware of what our futures would hold. As our focuses shifted from our secluded haven we found ourselves pushed out into a new world, and a much bigger one at that. This held new experiences for him and I, but new experiences that did not include each other. Now we stand in the midst of our senior year of high school, and I find a strange comfort in the fact that nine years ago we formed a friendship, and nine years later we are able to renew what we had started. Through out the nine years that have passed I have watched him and I evolve separately into brand new people. I look with a new set of eyes out at the world thanks to this individual, and this is a thanks to him, from not only me but everyone who knows him. I have a friend. Nine years ago, you would have found him and I, living in two separate worlds, but one alike. Nine years later and he is a man, a man ready to serve for our country, to protect people like us, giving us freedom. Nine years later and he is being shipped away, and all that I can do is wave with the thought in the back of my head wishing that I didn't waste so much time.

Thank you for your service.

A series of questions.

Are you happy with who you are?

Those seven words, and we all start running. Changing subjects, shifting our focus, doing anything at all to avoid the question at hand. Am I happy with the person that I am? It's plain and simple, self explanatory, but nearly impossible to answer. Because once we're asked this question, the first thing that runs through our minds is what we have to be happy for. My family, my friends, my education... The list goes on and on. But once the initial question has subsided and once the words finally seep in, those seven words become much more than just seven words. They become a question of our existence, of our importance and the impact that we have had, or not had. They become an itching reminder that maybe we're not the people that we promised ourselves we would be the last time that someone asked us that same question. Are you happy with who you are? Those seven words, and we all start running. Maybe because of disappointment, maybe because of fear. But probably because, hey, maybe we don't really know who we are at all.

If only it were possible to expose these words.

Wave goodbye, but don't say it.

Part Three.

After escaping the cold, I made my way up our carefully waxed and polished staircase, down the pastel painted floral décor hallway, and into my room; cream walls connected by a perfectly bleach white carpet. It was always refreshing to see the painting of the famous “Le Jardin Giverny” hanging in between the two posts that almost barely touched my ceiling. There was always something about Claude Monet’s delicate nature that calmed me down, regardless of it I needed the calming or not.

I heard my mother downstairs in the kitchen, shuffling through the drawers and dicing tonight’s vegetables in every direction, making smaller pieces than necessary. I could picture the occasional tear falling from one of her eyes as she leaned over a stack of carefully sliced onions strategically placed on the cutting board. When I was younger, watching my mother prepare dinner was the most exciting part of the day. I was intrigued by they way her delicate hands gripped the steel knife, the way she seemed to be floating from one drawer to the next, but it was something about the onions that captivated me most of all. It was then, as my mother peeled and chopped what was before her, that her eyes began to water. It was then, and only then, that I could capture an ounce of emotion from my mother. Then, and only then, that she allowed herself to feel.

Everything seemed to be going the way it usually did, I sat on my floor staring out at the pages in front of me with heavy eyes waiting to be called for dinner.

The integral is the limit for an infinite number of rectangles… If x equals to… the continuous… His eyes, those eyes-

“Samantha, it’s time for dinner.”

Damn.

so 4, no you are not.

Dear _,
You are not, and you never will be. I wish that I could just show you exactly how much you've impacted the way that I look at the world. You've lulled me into a hypnotic fantasy that regardless of the cards that life may hand us, we can still remain pure, innocent and worthy of every possible ounce of happiness. And that's what I hope you soon realize, that you deserve every single happy moment that you will get in the future. And although sometimes I wish that I could be the source of that, I am glad that it is coming from somewhere. No matter how much you truly feel that you are undeserving, no matter how many times that you look badly out upon a harsh world, please remember, there are people out there, people just like me, who stare back at you with such wonder and love and compassion. People like me who took one look at you and softened, molded and transformed. It's people like you who change people like me, and you don't even know the half of it.

Love always,
Cassandra.

August.

Tick. Tick. It's ticking away. Time, that is. It's fleeting by. Every second, minute, hour, day, week, month, year; it's all absorbing into this type of concept. Sometimes it happens so fast that it's impossible to even notice until it's gone. It just appears and disappears, and we never realize how valuable it really is until we're watching the second hand increase it's speed leaving us behind. It doesn't seem too bad, because with every second lost, another follows, right? ...Right? But you better be careful, because before you know it... Tick. Tick. It's ticking away. Time, that is... Moving so fast that you don't even realize how important it really is... until it's gone.

Part Two.

“Thank you, thanks.”

Is everything okay?

Flustered, he tensed his neck and walked off towards his grandmother. I saw her whispering to him, apprehensively stroking his arm with a concerned form of sadness in her touch. Shuffling his way through the crowd, guiding his grandmother, Ellard Smith appeared untouched, as if this wasn’t the first time he’d been greeted with misfortune. For the first, and last time, he was exactly as he seemed.

After breaking my stare, I gradually proceeded down the hallway towards the outside. It was a crisp chilled day, the kind that reddened your nose with its frosty glazed air. Walking home through the stabbing cold, I recalled Ellard’s jade-stricken eyes. It was then that I realized.

There’s something about those eyes.

And there was. It was as if someone precisely blended each shade of green to the perfect degree of beauty, hidden behind a sea of lashes perfectly arched that granted one the privilege to look inside. Ellard’s eyes were soft and kind as they looked out upon a world that merely looked past him, but he didn’t seem to mind. He just wandered; whether or not he knew where he was going was hidden behind his eyes.

The frozen winds blew through my jacket striking my ears, forcing a red tint upon my skin. Normally the cold would have irritated me, but today was clearly much different than the rest. Approaching my street, I turned the corner keeping my eyes focused on the sidewalk avoiding the gusting cold from reaching them. It was only until the winds settled down that I glanced up at place that I called home. I called it home, but it was merely a house. Most of the kids in my school would classify me as one of “them”, them meaning more fortunate than the rest, but they were wrong. Since when did the size of a house determine someone’s fortune? Our fortunes tell our futures, and if my house is any indication of what is in store for the rest of my life then I want no part of it. Hollow and empty; if that’s more fortunate than the rest then there must be some sort of housing problem in this town.

There wasn’t much conversation within my household. I usually retired to my room to toil over the mountainous stacks of homework until dinner, which we forcibly ate around our large mahogany dining room table. Until then no one disrupted each other, just continuing to live our lives. No questions asked, no questions answered.

I always will.

It's as simple as the picture over <--- there.









It's that simple. Defeat and acknowledgment of it. I have been defeated, and I know it. I've known it for a while now, but once you admit to something, it's real. We can recite our remedies of soothing words in repetitious fashions to neglect just how much hurt we harbor. We recite these pretty little words in repetitious fashions to neglect the pain that we feel. And right now, I feel. I feel a lot of things, but it's been difficult to define them as negative or positive, more like a shade of gray. Somewhere between the black and the white, there I stand, feeling something. Something that I haven't felt before, something mutual, something gray. But at least I'm feeling, right? And at least I'm acknowledging my defeat.

Because it's as simple as the picture up there^. It's that simple... or, I thought it was.

House of Cards.

"According to this myth, the gods tie an invisible red string around the ankles of men and women who are destined to be soul mates and will one day marry each other. The two people connected by the red thread are destined lovers, regardless of time, place or circumstances. This magical cord may stretch or tangle, but never break."