It's beginning to look a lot like...

The poor leaves must be beyond freezing cold. Utah, Utah, Utah. Always inflicting weather so quickly...

Interested Insults in Disguise

If sticks could branch o’er fears and demons great,

I’d ne’er find myself hope for more than these.

A tree sits not for years to only wait;

No, his buds do wave at dead falling leaves.

His pulse beats wild like flustered rabbits’ darts

But never sings more than a bee’s soft hum.

His wiry wooden fingers stab at hearts

But never fails too, bidding my beat come.

Dirt doesn’t come em’rald-eyed to stare up,

But often’s dragooned by jealous stares down,

And humbly hides until dug down enough.

The sky and ground are always wear’ng his crown.

So sky and dirt wish not to be bear’ng it,

His leaves be my gold, wreathed, on my crown set.

_____For English class we were apparently supposed to write a sonnet, and this is what I've been able to come up with in an hour. Yeah, I know, the meter is off, but I sorta gave up on searching for synonyms. The thesaurus is only a friend for so long.

_____I hope it's not supposed to be about love... because it's more like I'm in hopes of taking over a tree. How odd it is too... but sleep calls greater than whistles through wood.

(Later side-note: apparently I didn't do too horribly on this, because my English teacher thought that I had plagiarized it, so Googled the title and returned it to me failed with this blog page attached... rather amusing.) : )

What a Life!

_____In the early morning, I’d heard a hundred milk bottles shatter. The newspaper boy didn’t really have great aim.
_____“Stupid cat,” he grumbled, another cat hissing after him and his abysmal aim. If he was a soldier, he would have hit the entire ocean trying to hit Asia.
_____Finally I slumped down on the doorstep of a joint trailer house. Another tabby cat hissed after the boy on the bike crunching his way down the driveway. If I could have flicked my rubber bands after him, he’d be a dead man. Being a newspaper sucks though – we have no opposable thumbs.
_____I must have closed my ruffled paper for a bit, because when I woke up I was laying flat on a cool glass coffee table with a ceiling fan above me. Ahh, this was the life.
_____"I love you," was whispered across the room. Or was it? I couldn’t see; maybe it was just another cat rubbing against things and making weird noises. “I love you too?” I said quietly.
_____A little girl picked me up and stared at my belly. I could see the other side of the room now. People gathered around something with their heads down and their hands out. “No! No!” A woman with curly hair cried out and covered her mouth with one hand. All of the people around her started crying for some reason. It felt like ages until I was set down again, and people came in to take away what everyone was crowded around. The little girl tried not to stare at the man who was being covered up and wasn’t moving.
_____Whoa. Maybe this wasn’t the life.

It's Only for a Day

_____It wasn’t really that bad. Dying, that is. I’d known I was going to die anyway, so it wasn’t even surprising to me. The doctors told me that I only had so long to live. I’d expected that it would be shocking.

_____It was simple, really. Stop feeling, stop seeing, stop hearing, stop thinking even. If a soul thought their way through this, they would probably go insane. What happens when the soul itself is insane?

_____Sucked into a pool of ice water, with the instant realization that I was going to drown, I was peaceful still. The water only disappeared once I ran out of breath, and by that time, it was as if we’d gone through every season in a blur, until the old me was laying still in the winter time, and the new me was standing as a stream of warm sunlight itself.

_____Everyone was sobbing. Why were they so sad? It seemed like this should be a happy place. Mary was rubbing her wedding ring with one hand, and holding the old me with her other. “No! No!” Maybe she could feel me touching her, maybe she couldn’t. I just hoped she’d let go soon. I kissed her forehead and touched my son’s hand that was holding his wife’s.

_____I turned to go to the door of our house – it wouldn’t be for long; Mary had so many more people to touch that she’d be gone from here soon enough – but stopped when I saw her. She sat on the couch, wide-eyed and staring at the Sunday funnies. Then her eyes flicked up to me for an instant, before she went back to staring at the paper. When she looked up at me again, I waved at her, and if it was even possible, her eyes got wider, and she gripped the paper tightly. I laughed as I let myself out.

_____Grandchildren have that effect on dead people.

I'd rather say it all and fix the mess later,
Than hold my guts in and let the mess build up inside.

Is it ever remotely possible to end your life? Even if it has been so-called ended, it never would truly end until the last person forgets you, and then you're just left to the dirt. But then you're part of the dirt. Of the plants. Of the animals. Maybe someday you find a little bit of yourself becoming a little bit of someone else. And then you're still there, a million thoughts of your own in a million thoughts of someone else, whether you know it or not.

My soul, my eyes, my mirror, my camera

Some people say you can see someone's soul through their eyes.
Some people say that souls are kept inside mirrors; that's why it's bad luck to break them.
I've only ever seen my own soul through the reflection of my eyes in a mirror.
Some people refuse to have pictures taken of them because they believe their soul can be stolen that way.
If I take a picture of my eyes in a mirror, am I stealing my own soul? Or does it just make me have a two-fold soul?

Communicating With Batted Lashes

_____She gripped the newspaper page with straight fingers, as if it was supposed to be natural. Her pinkies locked, but she didn’t notice. She was trying to forget things beside this as they happened. Her eyes scanned the page, up, down, side to side, still trying to look natural. Natural was a lie, she knew it, but didn’t know that it showed. It’s hard for a nine year old to control their body language sometimes. Her fingers ached. Her eyes ached.

_____“No! No!” She could hear them sobbing and their voices crack as they tried to compose themselves. She didn’t need to try to compose herself. She’d been lying that she was composed this whole time, wasn’t she?

_____“You win.” Garfield said to Jon. She went back to the beginning of the comic line. What did Jon win?

_____She focused her eyes even more intently on every line across Garfield’s back, but focus didn’t help a thing when her mind could only imagine the entire newspaper being blank and made of clear plastic wrap. All it does is make what’s happening on the other side a little bit fuzzier for your mind. She could see them touching him; she could see them holding each others’ hands with tears in their eyes and red faces.

_____“You win.” Garfield said to Jon. She went back to the beginning of the comic line. What was it that Jon won?

_____She could see him. His head was tilted to the side, and he was shaking. He looked like he was choking. Mostly she could only see his wife, sitting at his side and laying her hand on his. She could almost see her silent praying as she stifled her cries.

_____But the girl could see him still. Above himself, his hand on his wife’s shoulder, smiling. He turned to walk out of the house, and looked at them. She was still staring at Garfield. She tried to ignore even him too. Why today? Why now? Stop, stop. What did Jon win?

_____He walked down the steps, to the left, and down the jagged sidewalk stones. He didn’t turn around to wave until he was out from under the tree, finally making noise as he crunched down the red gravel driveway.

_____"You win." What was it that Jon had won? She stroked the page with her thumbs until the ink was fading.

_____They were making telephone calls now. They still were sobbing. Their voices cracked still. The doorbell rang; they hugged people. They called more people. They got more phone calls.

_____She set the comic down with all of the normalcy that she could muster.

_____“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said to no one in particular. She snuck one glance at him as she passed on her way to the hall, and wished she hadn’t.

_____“I was there,” She said to her cousin. Her hands had less of a death grip on the dwindling ropes of the swing than they had on the newspaper that morning.

_____“I know, Mom and Dad told me,” Her cousin pushed her again. “I’m gonna miss him.”

_____“Yeah,” she kicked her legs forward. “Me too.”