To The Shadow People

We are creatures of the wind,
whistling and wandering through an endless atmosphere
of barren boulevards and hollow highways.
Every place we go is as desolate as the bottom of our hearts.
We are longing to see the brightness of the night time horizon
Illuminating a city of endless possibilities.
We are captivated by urbanization.
Tall towers of glowing squares
Spread out on the canvas of metal,
Reaching higher and higher,
Aspiring to touch the sky.

Buildings rise up over the town
Sparkling with dreams of growth, expansion
Shadowing the victims at the bottom
with their mass.

In a thick forest of bewilderment
We are the trees in New York City.
Silent on the corners of dead end streets.
Days grow colder and
the nights come sooner.

We wait for the snow to blanket us

until the unveiling of another year,

It will be the closest we will get to the past,

To the children we once were,

When the monsters were under our beds,

Not eyeing us from across the street,

Scanning us with hot red eyes from head to toe,

From our home knitted hats 

to our tattered shoes,

showing our toes through the holes in our socks.

Fear the day
When I am the last of the trees in a city of steel and cement.
Old with crooked branches and dead leaves,
Scratches in my bark from
you gas guzzlers
your junkers and clunkers
your accidents scarring my skin until
I am cut down...
Because I am the last,
And I am no longer a contrast
but a displeasing eye sore.
Because I am a broken puzzle piece in this maze of mankind.

To the shadow people:
To the boy eating his lunch behind the stairs,
To the girl who choses to believe that she is not beautiful,
To the ones with white scars on their wrists.
Over power the world.
Claim the pavement beneath you with your dark roots
Stand your ground.
Carry on your life in the soil I leave behind.
When they cut you down grow through.
Be the blooming contrast
In a city of skyscrapers.

Love Poem

Tornado Hearts

We are creatures of the wind,

whistling and wandering through an endless atmosphere

of barren boulevards and hollow highways.

Every place we go is as desolate as the bottom of our hearts.

Abandonment is a bass drum beating in an empty street,

It is only us and we move our feet to the beat.

Like an overplayed song

the bass drum goes on

and the lifeless leaves dance with excitement

through abandoned alleys.

No one wants us,

Like tumbleweeds in a ghost town

we're whisked away through Autumn air,

through empty streets,

over cracked, chalky pavement craving for cars

and we are one with nothing.

We are the leaves, as orange as pumpkins

and we are the grass, growing older each day,

turning brown with our emotions.

Days grow colder and

the night comes sooner.

We wait for the snow to blanket us,

It will be the closest we will get to the past,

To the children we once were,

when the monsters were under our beds

not across the room

scanning us from head to toe,

from our home knitted hats

to our worn shoes,

our toes poking out through the holes in our socks.

We wait for the snow to cover us

until the unveiling of another year,

one year closer to the end.

And like the snow falling in individual flakes

you are more unique than the rest,

I’ll never let you forget.

We fall into that cool, freshly laid, blanket.

The wind is brisk and bracing

but it will sweep us through another season,

Together.

Never let the monsters scare you.

Stay strong,

a tornado through the empty street.

Take down the walls that build your fear

let your fear fall and your pride grow.

Like the flower of the fresh green spring

Stay beautiful.

Burning House

Yohanna

I’ve never been a morning person. Everything that I do during my mornings is as much of a haze as the dew on the windshield of my car, until I have my coffee. My morning coffee acts as the windshield wipers of my day, clearing my mind so I can start fresh. This morning was just like the rest, but amidst my morning fog something happened that I will remember for the rest of my life.

Every year my parents and I take a 17 hour road trip down to the great southern state of Tennessee. My great grandparents live in a town called Pigeon Forge up in the mountains with a view that will make your breath halt in your chest. Across the street, the cows will wake you up in the morning, and the stars, glued to the canvas of the nebulous night, will put you to sleep through the sky lights.

My great grandparents aren’t getting any younger, but they still live as if they were in their thirties. My great grandmother is a nostalgic woman whose wisdom you can experience from the warmth of her laugh. My great grandfather is a quiet man with stories that keep you chuckling and a blossoming green thumb that’s seen more sun than the snow on the top of Mount Everest.

On this morning, my great grandfather, who had never tried to connect with me emotionally any more than hugs, gifted me the most antique and fragile guitar I had ever seen. He told me of how he wished he had learnt to play it, but how he knew that he wouldn’t have the time left in his life to pick it up. He confessed that the guitar was made by his father for his first spouse, Yohanna, and that she had died young and the guitar had been passed to him and then unto me. He gave it to me so I could learn to play, with hopes that someday, I would play it for him. 

My Super Secret Box

I’ve always been a firm believer in my dreams. My dreams can be foolish and I will still treat them as some may treat their horoscope, researching and relying upon them. My dreams give me the advice that I need to realize when my mind is crying out for change. After the umpteenth dream that I had about this boy, I knew I needed to make my change.

Falling in love has always been my forte. I’ve been in and out of love more times than I can count on one hand, and with only one of them did I stay in love. With this one boy I have more memories than I can recollect, but there are a vast amount that I can’t forget. I’ll never forget the first kiss, how childish we seemed in a corner, hiding from the rest of the world as he tried to set the tone of the mood he desired with the few songs he had downloaded to his cell phone. I’ll never forget the first slow dance, where we hugged and swayed in his empty kitchen to an acoustic song sung by some punk rock band that I eventually out grew like a used pair of pants. I’ll never forget breaking his heart, and the regret that I feel every time that I realize he doesn’t trust me.

I want to cure him like a patient in a busy hospital. Among all the hustle and bustle of our complex lives, sweeping by with the injured patients we meet sitting in the desk behind you, carrying a cardboard sign down the street, typing numbly at work, patients who will someday disappear. I want to cure him with an open heart surgery, insecure and intimidating, but necessary to continue our irrepressible endings. I want to spend my time, waiting for our end, with him, healing his wounds with every second of nurture and every gift of enjoyment we’re given. If he leaves me on the inhospitable medical table, I’ll see him in my dreams, and I’ll live in my mind with my endless memories of the elements within his heart.

The Hospital Bracelet

I tend to blend with my surroundings, now you see me, now you don’t. I don’t stand out, I never have. I’m not social, I’m not popular, I’ve never been recognized for a sparkling smile or for having exceptional humor, but I’m also not the girl that you’re under the impression that I am. I have the rebellion of our ordinary youth and I’m a punk at heart.

We were presented with the most snow we had gotten yet that winter. As I drove up into Windham with a car full of riotous teens like myself, the unflustered snow fell thickly onto the road. I drove vigilantly but sang as loudly as I could, pumped with the adrenaline of soon being in a small room with a big crowd.

Being front and center is the greatest accomplishment of going to a concert, that is an accomplishment I achieved. I screamed the lyrics I had practiced repeatedly into the microphone held in the hands of the singer of my favorite local band. In that moment I stood out from the majority. Then suddenly I was taken down, and everything went black. 

Moments later, the first thing I saw were the legs of those around me, jumping with the beat. There I was, blending in with the floor. I stood up and ran towards the door in the back of the room, which seemed further away now than it was when I entered. I clutched the center of my face with both hands as if it were about to fall off and pushed my way out of the room and into the night. The cool air struck me like a bat to a baseball, but I kept outward until I reached the snow, higher off of the ground now than it was when I parked my car. I grabbed a handful, and without trying, it formed a snow ball in my blazing hands, which then again moved toward the center of my face with the gelid snow, and in that moment, I blended in with the snow.

My Favorite Blanket

When most people are born, they are gifted a blanket or quilt to carry with them as they grow up. My gift was a stuffed dog which was in due course gifted away without my consent. I never slept with the animal, nor have I ever preferred dogs over any other animal, so I guess there were no hard feelings to its passing, but I lost the one object that seemed to contain the memories of my infant life.

One Christmas event several years later, my mother was gifted a blanket which would soon be stolen away by none other than myself. The blanket was pink like a rose quartz with Strawberry Shortcake, a character I had no personal experience with, on the front with her cat. The design was not significant to me, in fact I've never enjoyed the color pink either, but the blanket took a place in my life that I couldn't live without.

The velvety feel of the blanket rests over my comforter every night, It wraps me up when I doze on the couch and comforts me when I am ill or recovering. The cats love it as much as I. We have 4 cats and they would all curl up on my blanket if they got the chance, and I'm always open to sharing. 

From that day on I carried my blanket with me through year after year, more so than I ever had my stuffed dog. It may not have been present at my birth or my 5th birthday when I gained new interests in barbies and left it in storage for 10 more years, but it filled a gap and holds more memories than my infantile gift and gains more as I carry it through my life like the child I once was and will try to be until my I gift it to my child.

My Longboard

Car shows have always been one of my fathers favorite events, I inherited my love for anything that has 4 wheels from him. I've always been daddies little girl and he's shaped me into the car loving, thrill seeking, grease monkey that I am today. When I picked up long boarding he was hooked with his eyes. He wanted my longboard like he wants his christmas presents every year, he's a bigger child than I am most of the time.

That Sunday in August my father and I took his Forest Green Toyota T100 pick up truck, one of his multiple truck that I need to lift myself into down to the tourist infested streets of Old Orchard Beach to see a car show. We hadn't been to a car show in several years and it's so nice to spend time with my dad because I've always been daddies girl.

It was a warm day but the sky was gray with clouds to keep the humidity from impacting our day. After the show ended and the crowd cleared, we went back to his truck and pulled our longboards out of the bed. His board which was once mine, suited him in size. The bamboo board came up above his waist in length, which was nearly up to my chest. My new board comes measures up to about my thigh, not nearly as massive in length, and rides low to the ground. Being so close to the earth is not a riding style I was used to, and my father was not accustomed to his new board at all, though he had experience. 

For the first time that day, my father and I went for a ride. The breeze was perfect off the ocean and through my hair. I stumbled over my feet a handful of times before I became used to the distance between my board and the rigid, gray pavement, only slightly darker than the sky. My father skated better than he thought he would, which was a pleasant surprise, making himself and I an even match.

We made it until Ocean Park and skated back toward the now empty parking lot. I replaced my board in the truck of my dads truck and jumped into the passenger seat. I'm always going to be daddies little girl.

Memories

September 18, 2013

Journal Entry #4

I miss you more and more every year. We're moving through high school as fast as my father on the highway, and every year I see you less and less, but you're still my best friend and my only real friend. We've always talked about burying a time capsule in my backyard, but there are so many memories that can't be captured and stored in a tiny box, so this is my "Remember When."

Remember when we walked from McDonald's all the way to Old Orchard beach because none of us had a car, and when we used to stay at your house all the time and just sit on your couch and eat mac and cheese like lazy bums because we had nothing to do and nowhere to go. Remember how we hand wrote each other letters everyday, always finding new ways to fold them for a prettier delivery, and how we called each other  and stayed up late every night. Back when we didn't just keep in touch through text messages and snap chats. Remember how we used to actually have classes together and I saw you in school and we could never keep quiet, even on separate sides of the room? Remember when my dad chaperoned the field trip for History Day, and we one 1st place for our website on the Cold War (which was less than impressive,) and we saw the alligator in the library with the tiny purple hat that made us laugh hysterically? Then on the way home my dad got all the students in the back of the bus to make a video that looked like the bus rolled over (which also came out poorly.) Remember when we were obsessed with Zumiez? Remember when we spent weeks at my house after school, snacking on popcorn and chocolates, thinking and rehearsing for our dance final? I really think we captured our friendship in that dance and in all of those videos. Then there was Minerva, and how we took down my mail box with that big rusty red truck, and we sat on milk crates, holding on for dear life while I learned how to drive a standard in a vehicle that had no brakes. Remember how we donkbaded to the lawnmower races, with all of its exhaust fumes and bright lights. I think of that when I realize how much of a redneck I really am.

I'll always remember the night we snuck out to my grandparents pool to see the stars and how beautiful they were, lighting up the sky like a dome surrounding us in the forest. I'll remember our trip to Warped Tour and Pierce the Veil and all of our local shows, where we dressed up just to make a good night out of it. I'll always remember our trips to Tennessee and Vermont and how you know my family just as well as I do, and all of the Grenier Fests and movie tickets and photographs together. I'll never forget all of these little things that keep us together and that will keep you in my life forever. You're truly my best friend and you always will be, until we're old in our rocking chairs talking to our grandchildren together, singing "When I was a young warthog!"