Vignette Story

Free Fall 

    I fought back. I wouldn't leave. Nothing could make me leave. I stayed firmly planted to my chair hoping it would swallow me up. I covered my ears, and screamed, and cried. I cried out for someone that didn’t exist. I wanted someone to decide for me. I  was still learning to add and subtract. I wasn’t ready to make a decision that would change my life forever. I shouldn’t of had to, but here I am. Being told to stay or go and I made my decision. No. I was told that it was too much for him. That he was on the verge of leaving. On the verge of falling. The rope holding him, suspended in air, was on the verge of snapping. Sending him on a free fall and he would be gone.

Vignette Story

Repetition

   I decided against speaking about it. What was there to say that hadn't already been yelled? It had all been screamed at the top of lungs so why say it again? It was a pointless gesture to repeat things that had already been said. No one asked me to say anything so I didn't think I needed to. I held my words inside and they remained thoughts. Thoughts that swarmed my head like bees. I would close my eyes and see them. I could hear them sometimes too. When I slept I dreamed about muffled yelling and cracked doors. I would push them out one ear but they would immediately go back in the other. Repeating themselves and reminding me constantly.

Vignette Story

Endless Flood

   Tears flooded my face. Though I was silent, I struggled to catch my breath. It didn't end. More tears replaced ones that fell. They followed each other like kids in line. I couldn't move. I had been hit by something that held me down. Something that made me shed tears to no end. I had always been able to hide myself from it but it found me and it attacked.

Vignette Story

Details

   I forgot how she looked. It would hit me in the middle of the night and hurt like the thought had been burned into my mind. Could I forget? I left pictures ready for these nights. Within arms' reach. I would hold them close and make sure I noticed every detail. Every detail I had been over hundreds of times. It's scary how easy it is to forget those things. You are reminded of these details everyday and then when the reminders are gone these details scare you. They become something more than what they were because then you realize how much more you must've forgotten. Things that made you what you are, are now lost.

Vignette Story

Pause Button

   Home wasn't home anymore. It was cold and quiet. Before there was yelling so I guess it was a step up. He spoke to me a couple times at night and was gone when I woke up in the mornings. It was coexisting and nothing more. The bare minimum. When she was gone we froze. Like we were in a tv show and someone pressed pause. Things were supposed to be better and they weren't. They weren't worse, but they weren't better. They weren't anything. We just waited. Through every day that crawled by before our eyes we stayed on pause. We knew we had to because if the play button was pressed we would fall from our snapped ropes that held us for so long.

Vignette Story

Muffled 

   Waking up in the middle of the night wasn't out of the ordinary for me. I had always had trouble sleeping through the night. The sound of muffled yelling is what drew me from my bed. I stepped out into the hallway as I rubbed my eyes. The yelling was no longer muffled but not loud enough to be understood from my place outside my bedroom door. Where they were felt so far away from me. They weren't just downstairs, they were somewhere else. I knew this because I could still go back to sleep. I could pretend nothing was going on because I didn't know what was going on. This was my normal.

Vignette Story

Wall of Sand                                      

 She spoke with slurred words. It made me sick to my stomach. She tripped over her syllables and dragged her way through her sentences. Every letter fought back against her. She struggled to keep her balance as she walked towards me. I backed away and covered my ears. I hid myself away. I put my emotions in a bag and tied it up. I put them under lock and key and buried them like treasure. Then, I buried myself. Buried myself in sand that choked me. Sand that caused me to cough and gasp for air. I built a wall with that sand. Packed it together and built it up high. Higher than anyone could get past. Some scrape away at the sand and fight their way through and still I build it back up again. Though I’m choking, I build it back up.

Vignette Story

Pounding Part 2

    I stood outside the door watching the crack grow. It grew like a vine, wrapping itself around the door and stretching out onto the walls. All I could hear was the sound of him yelling “Let me go. I hate you.” in a way that caused tears to gather in my eyes. 

    “You can't.” She spoke in a hushed tone but it was the saddest thing my ears had ever been witness to. As if she was begging for her life even though she knew she would be killed. I always thought she was so strong but I suppose even the strong go through times of weakness. You could hear his fists and feet slamming against the door. With each new smack against the cracked wood a new one immediately followed. The sound was so horrible it felt as if my ears began to bleed. Blood dripping from my ears like the tears that dripped down my cheeks. Blood that drowned me and put up a wall between myself and the surrounding sounds. I felt like I was underwater, isolated from everything that went on above the thick darkness of my tears that submerged me. 

“Don’t make me hurt you.” He said this hesitantly. He didn't want to but it had come to that point for him. His breaking point. When his body took the form of a vase and it threw itself to the ground.

“It won't make a difference. I’ve already done more damage than you can do.” She spoke in a tired voice. She was only holding on by a thread. It sounded as if her soul was collapsing like a house of cards. 

“Let him go.” I had come up from under my tears and clotted the blood raining from my ears. I said this in a way that I had never spoken before. Not in the warm, careless way I had always spoke. My voice was cold. So cold I could see my breath as I spoke those words. Completely and utterly unfeeling. Then, the pounding stopped. My mother dragged herself from her spot against the other side of the closed door and the broken door knob turned slowly. The door opened to reveal his face. He was red and his eyes were wet. He looked down at me and met my eyes. He looked down and began walking towards the stairs. He stopped next to me and touched my shoulder as if he wanted to hug me like he always had when he was going somewhere. He let his hand fall back to his side and continued walking. Down the stairs and out the door. 

Vignette Story

Pounding

    The sound of the crash filled my ears like a firework set off closer than it should’ve been. I slowly made my way up the stairs and stopped at the landing. I had run into a force field that wasn’t actually there. Something in my little head told me to stop. It was as if the walls were speaking to me telling me no. As if the stairs I had just stepped on were pulling me back down. Back down to my spot on the striped carpet in front of the tv. Back down to the show with the characters that made every problem go away. Where I sat happy in my own little oblivion. Something as forgiving and forgetful as a child’s mind is a beautiful thing. Beautiful things are often taken advantage of. Beautiful things often have a fatal flaw. My mind was flawed with curiosity. So I continued past the nonexistent force field and the speaking walls and pulled away from the steps that tried to drag me down. I made it all the way to the door. The door with its fresh white paint and broken door knob. The same door knob that had trapped me in that room accidentally for years. Or maybe it wasn't accidentally. Maybe the door knob and the walls and the stairs and the force field all served the same purpose. To preserve my forgiving and forgetful mind. My mistake was ignoring them. The door with the fresh white paint and the broken door knob had a crack. A long jagged crack right down the center. Not a literal crack but a metaphorical crack. A crack that represented how my look on life would change. How the grey areas would be colored in like one of my coloring books. The perfectly painted door with the  broken door knob was imperfect. Imperfect like my curiosity. Imperfect like my life. 

Interpretation

My previous post was called a Sestina. In class we were told to pick six words (preferably ones with multiple meanings) and I chose the words current, wind, channel, coast, sense, and cast. We were given the format for a Sestina (google it if you don't know what a Sestina is) and told to begin. Normally, it takes me most of the period to begin writing, but that didn't happen. It was just kind of like something that was a blank page and then it wasn't. But, the strange part is that when I finished it and read it over, I realized that I had written about something very close to my heart without being conscious to it.
That has never happened to me until now.
My favorite part about writing poetry is that anyone can interpret it anyway they want. You could see your own poem as a bunch of random thoughts and someone else might see it as something that's like otherworldly. The variation of interpretation from person to person is crazy.
But, anyway, the Sestina I wrote was called For Now and deals with a lot of fighting and loss of consciousness. When I wrote it I thought I was just writing what I thought sounded okay. What else was I supposed to do with such a strict guide line? Definitely not the outcome I was expecting. When I read it It made me think of addiction, and loss, and instability. Things that have been huge contributing factors to the person I am today and they will probably affect me in the future too. I just never expected to be able to interpret one of my own poems and relate it to myself like I would do with someone else's as an attempt to create a connection and develop an understanding.

Sestina Poem

For Now

A    Sometimes I sit by the Ocean just to challenge the current.
B    I provoke the waves and they carry along their strong gusts of wind.
C    The sea writhes with anger and it stirs up the channel,
D    but I continue to fight from my stance on the coast,
E    with the endless determination of a shark's sense
F    like playing a character of my own movie in which I was cast.

F    I hide backstage in the frame of the shadow I cast,
A    and I will never see light again if I continue snapping the wires of an electrical current
E    that chills my bones and ignites my blood and hits me with the uncertainty of the loss of sense,
B    but I know I will always reawaken to the whistle of the slow wind,
D    and then I will rest upon my thoughts that will never lose the soft inertia it takes to coast,
C    and I will crawl to the change of an emotional channel


C    when I find myself in the passenger seat of my car, fiddling with the knobs of the radio,     awakening the voices of each channel,
F    and I listen intently, dodging the words of the spell they cast.
D    "There is a power whose care teaches thy way along that pathless coast,— "
A    Maybe this power will be visible when I am conscious and able to keep time with a ticking clock, holding myself to something more current.
B    But the car still drives itself, so I stick my head out of the open window so I can be carried away by the wind,
E    and I fight the punches thrown, defending my last thread of sense.


E    I fight for the small thread because that is all that holds me to my seat in the car that drives me home to the fragile arms of sense,
C    but it still breaks and I'm slipping back into a ferocious channel.
B    I try to grasp onto the reliability of the wind,
F    but when you're falling like I am, there's no time for safety nets to be cast,
A    so I listen to the air that drops me quick with each push of its current,
D    and I reminisce over the days when this was just an internal war on the coast.

D    My mind was clearer on the coast
E    A full moon could be seen as easily as my sense,
A    and now I'm drowning in the current,
C    of my own creation, and in the channel,
F    filled with my consciousness that I have cast.
B    But, when I pay attention, sometimes, I can catch a few pieces that throw themselves above the surface, like what I once did with the wind.


B    It's easier to catch the wind.
D    So for now, I will hold my head to the seat of my car that will continue its coast,
F    and I know my mind will not shatter if I stay in this cast,
E    and maybe, one day, I will see another full moon that looks like sense,
C    and maybe by then, I'll be swimming, not drowning, in the channel.
A    I just have to remember, that one day, I will win the war against the current.

20 Little Poetry Projects

    1. The night sweeps over us like a lingering broom.

    2. The bristles of which swallow me up.

    3. The sight of stars pulls me from my coma,

    3. and I feel the salt water that soaks my gums.

    5. It tastes like the beaches of Greece once did, when I spent my days wrapped in the words of Sylvia Plath.

    6. The dissapearing sun makes me tired

    4. and I smell the smoke of a candle as its rays set across the sea.

    3. We hear the clouds that tumble in above us,

    9. but we sit without umbrellas to keep out the rain.

    19. The sand builds up castles to provide itself asylum,

    8.  so I feel like a fool when the sun continues to fly.

    7. A queen to us all, holds her scepter up against the clouds and they bow and scatter.

    16. A weak ruler who we love with the intensity of bleeding lips.

    18. She reminds us of an old saying, qui vivra verra, that fills the cracks left by uncertainty in our hearts.
    3. A phrase that sticks to the roof of your mouth and tastes like hope

    17. and we must carry it with us if we ever want to be able to live without it,

    10. so we write it on our skin until the eleventh hour,

    13. then we stretch the words and wrap them around our veins.

    11. The solid rocks of reliability gripping the shore with the last of their strength

    14. and love uses her small arms to pin them to the beach.

    3.  The smell of darkness fills me with emptiness

    12. and though I’m alone on the sand, I have to fight through a crowd to get a good look at the last setting sun.

    15. To be remembered for her rays that held us while we slept

    20. and to thank her for ending my coma.

Places Where Writing Hides Poem

Words that Hide Beneath the Syllables of an Uneasy Parent
   
Reading in between the lines of words that form a stuttering agreement.
Mutterings accompanied by weak smiles and hesitant nods that quickly digest themselves into memories
that is followed by the dreaded ambience of a goodbye,
in the presence of stuffed bags that dig their claws into the carpet,
who morph into the soft fibers that hope for a change of heart.

But, I will not stay in a room that fills itself with routine and the familiarity of an unfamiliar childhood.
A place where younger years climb the walls like frightened spiders,
and the floor walks across me,
where the happy eyes of unfamiliar frames follow my every move from behind reflective transparency.
   
Today I will walk across these floors
and give birth to a creak of a floorboard that calls my name.
In a fish bowl called home that has never seen the rise of a day where it is synonymous with refuge.

I will turn dreary door knobs and fill this house with the draft of resolution,
and put myself on the other side of the boundary.

REVIEW: The Stranger

At first, I struggled to follow and register the storyline of The Stranger, by Albert Camus, due to it being originally written in French and interpreted by Matthew Ward. Once I got used to the fast paced and non descriptive writing style used by Camus, I began to appreciate it for its simplicity. The plot doesn't hide behind endless adjectives and irrelevant details which was refreshing.

You are first introduced to the main character, Meursault, as he is coping with the death of his mother. "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know." It is immediately clear to the reader that Meursault in unlike any ordinary person. He is emotionally unattached. He approaches the death of his mother with such a careless demeanor that it's almost as if it means absolutely nothing to him. Yes, it is true that people cope with things differently, but this isn't the only time that his detachment from the world around him is displayed. "A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn't mean anything but that I didn't think so." He is asked by his girlfriend, who is named Marie, his opinions on their relationship, how he feels about her, and what he believes the future might hold for them on several occasions. Every time he is asked, he replies with the same indifference that he had before. It is unchanging. He sees no point in thinking or feeling anything, and sees no greater purpose for mankind or anything else in this world. This attitude is what creates eventual turmoil for Meursault when he kills a man for no apparent reason and his refusal to feel or show any remorse raises questions.

Meursault is put on trial for the murder and his mother's death is very quickly brought up. The prosecution, as well as Meursault's own lawyer, question why he did not grieve when his mother died, but Meursault felt no need to display feelings he did not feel. He simply refuses to adhere to the moral standards set by society and he is very quickly seen as a threat to those who are sentencing him. "I made him feel uncomfortable. He didn't understand me, and he was sort of holding it against me." This challenges the idea that society does away with what it can't control. So, that's exactly what happens to Meursault. Sentenced to death by beheading because he held a different understanding of life.

You must keep in mind that this story was told entirely from the point of view of Meursault, therefore, it's almost like yellow journalism because my opinion on Meursault's predicament is based entirely on observations made by Meursault. He still killed a man without motive, and that makes him guilty. What bothers me is how his sentence was so heavily based upon his generally indifferent views. Indifference is displayed so frequently throughout this story that it becomes one of the main themes. "for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the general indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself-" He faces his execution with the same indifference he held in the very first sentence of this novel.

What I like most about this story is how it questions so many theories and views about life and death with an unbelievable amount of ease. The story expresses so much tragedy, but without expectations or beliefs that all means nothing.