Writing: C17H21NO4

Mom said some people get hooked after just one time.

Granted, it wasn’t just the gateway stuff done five minutes

before class that everyone was doing in high school.

The first time I experienced it was late one night after

an emotionally ravaging day, in room-provided solitude,

eye-contact with a hummingbird silence.

Deafening heartbeats, injecting the day’s events into my

bloodstream. Hypothalamus overload, delusional parasitosis—

words crawling  just under the skin, pausing at my fingertips

expressed through a cracked shaky #2.

Ten minutes of ultimate inspiration, ultimate confidence;

euphoria, sweet euphoria, meet the brain.

A god for a single moment. Fifty thousand words,

fifty million thoughts, infinite possibilities. And yet

you? You granted life to a breathtaking new combination.

 Addiction.

I get it now. Every night I crave to reintroduce myself to

that divine creator living deep, deep within myself,

but many of these nights end with restless, sweaty

palms, and ravenous appetite for syntax that isn’t being fed.

The words again course through my veins, surge

through exhausted gray matter but I can’t. I can’t get

them out. They burn inside me and some days you have to

itch and scratch  at them until you bleed them onto the paper.

It’s a dripping mess, kindergarten finger-painting on cardstock.

Honesty in its purest form accompanied by increased body

temperature and pupils dilated twice their normal size,

courtesy of the dim desk lamp everyone buys for college.

And I admit it, I’m always looking for new ways to

reach the feeling of that first time. Speedballing syllables

with rhythm, I’m just a delinquent in downtown LA.

Escape

Escape

      It was a first for me. Memories of three young girls' lives being ended by a midnight locomotive flit in front of my eyes for a pale instant. My breath pulls inside me in a single sharp gasp before I manage to regain my composure and release the stranglehold on the air inside me.
      Relax.
      I take a step. A small, careful step from one dank wood tie to the next. My breath now comes in long, ever-steadying sighs, inhaling the autumn air that glides through the rays of the full moon to reach my cold-burning lungs. The ties of the railway, which disappear around a silent bend, suddenly have a certain serenity to them.
      With each progressing stride I lose myself a little more in the mix of the navy-tinted palette that blends the reflection of the sky on the river to my left. Each subtle wave seems to beckon me to enter the shallows, to forget my cares and drift into the pseudo sky it wears as a gurgling, imperfect mask.
      "Almost there."
      I jump, though only barely enough to be perceived. I stumble backwards slightly, tearing my gaze from the hypnotic rhythm that carpets the impostor moon. Having nearly forgotten that I was not alone, I stare at my companion's figure which moves with practiced steps, smoothly travailing the knobby, weatherworn planks which serve as our path. I steal a final lingering glance at the raw motion of the damp stolen sky and hurry to catch up to my friend who now blends with the shadows up ahead.
      I wonder what my friend is thinking right now--such a hard life, so many reasons to be unhappy, but always moving on. I am surprised to finally be on my way to "the place" I have heard so much about.
      I scan the ground ahead of me as I proceed, carefully measuring each step to land on the slightly-giving tracks in front of me. I come to a clearing: my destination. I look up from my restricted view of gravel and pine. I see a silhouette sinking slowly into the river.
      "What are you doing?" I cry, running towards the shape which now consists only of a still-clothed torso, and a head above the surface. Peace radiates from the pair of familiar golden eyes as they sink beneath the swell.
      My mind doesn't stop to rationalize before I have leapt off of the boulder which shoulders the stream; time lags as my body splinters the lunar mosaic resting on the surface. I remember how much I hate being wet just as I feel the weight of soaked jeans resisting my attempts to stay afloat.
      I find myself alone in the now rough waters, only deep blue surrounds me as I cling to a crevice in a  rock that braces itself in the center of the river. I stay there only momentarily, knowing that no person can physically stay under a choking current for so long. I push off of my stronghold and plunge back into the liquid struggle.
      I fight to swim to where I last saw those eyes, I get there and instantly stop thrashing against the current.  Because suddenly there is no current. The water is warm here--and eerily still. I can feel myself being drawn downward, just as I witnessed before, and even as my mind threatens to split its seams with panic, I can feel my lower body relaxing. As the water reaches my throat fear consumes me as I anticipate the claustrophobia I associate with being separated from cherished air.
      But it never comes.
      I hold my breath as long as I can, and then discover that it isn't necessary. I keep expecting to drown, to feel the water filling my lungs, but my breathing comes easy.
      I settle in a sitting position on the river's floor. Focusing through the water is like staring through layers of antique windows. As my eyes adjust  I can make out the body of my friend, eyes closed, sitting across from me on the sandy bottom in perfect tranquility.
      Surreal. It is the only word that describes the experience.
      Every time I had been told about this place, it had been described to me as an escape, but only now do I realize the literal sense of the word. After an indeterminable amount of time, the eyes across from mine open for a moment, a quick blue smile accompanying them. We both stand and with little effort rise towards the surface.
      We reenter reality and ride the flow to shore. I drag myself onto the boulder that I had used as a diving board and blink in surprise at a red and gold sunrise. Serenity, apparently, is no respecter of time. I stand and look back into the river, which now shows a smiling mask of the dimly sunlit sky. I resist the urge to plunge back into the impossible escape.
      I think of the life that has been given to my friend. The hardships that I can't even begin to understand, the times that I've been surprised by a lack of tears as experiences were described to me. "How can you know about this, and stand not to just escape forever?"
      After a long pause, my answer was spoken to the ground at a near whisper.
      "Life... is far from perfect. It seems like every person I've looked up to for acceptance has turned their back on me, has given up on me already. Some nights I sit up wondering why I shouldn't just give up on me, too. I don't even really have a family; all I've grown up with is people fighting around me. But I have to rise up. I have to rise above my parents' practically nonexistent expectations for me. Yes, I come here to escape every once in a while, but I can't turn my back on life, because if I turn my back on myself--then I truly do have no one."

Morninglight

I was supposed to copy the style of another author and write about my first day of college. I procrastinated until four in the morning the night before it was due, and it quickly turned into a satire of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight.


If you haven't read at least the first book you probably won't get it...
To be read in a whiney voice:

I hate Provo. It’s always raining here. It isn’t like Mapleton. In Mapleton it never rains and my mom is there. Just my dad works here and he’s always been overprotective.
            I walked to my first class in the Maeser building. I felt like everyone was watching me. It was raining. I hate Provo. Did I mention how much I hate Provo?
            I turned the corner into the classroom, relieved to be free from all of the staring eyes. I looked around the room; there was only one seat open. It was next to the most beautiful girl that I had ever seen. She was almost… inhuman somehow.
            As I walked to the lone empty seat I thought about how much I hate Provo. And rain. I sat down next to the girl and she hissed and scooted her chair away from me. Her dark eyes flashed at me for a moment. Then she got a weird look on her face that stayed for the rest of the movie, I mean… day. I thought, “That was weird. People never hissed at me and scooted away in Mapleton. But whatever, she’s pretty. I hate Provo. It rains here.”
            Then we went over the syllabus. I didn’t hear a word the teacher said because I was completely engulfed with staring at the beautiful girl next to me that had strangely pointy teeth.
            I broke the silence and said, “Are you a vampire?”
             And she said, “Noooo!”
            And I said, “Will you bite me?”
            And she said, “Noooo!”
            And I said, “Will you date me?”
            And she said, “Yeah cause you smell good and I watch you when you sleep.”
            And I was like, “Wait, what?”
            And she said, “Never mind.”
            And then all of the sudden there was this really buff girl that came up and was like, “I’m a really bad actress, and I’m definitely not a werewolf.” And then the pretty girl I was talking to hissed at the buff girl and I was like.
            “Hey stop that, I love you both… but buff girl you’re a baby. You can marry my son Renesme.”
            And the buff girl said, “IMMMPRINTINNNG.” And then she turned into a wolf and scampered away.
            And I was like, “That was weird, but she said she wasn’t a werewolf and I trust her because we used to build motorcycles together.”
            And then the teacher said, “Did something just happen?”
            And then I dropped an apple and the pretty girl caught it for me really fast. And then we were playing baseball. And then I was like, “I know what you are.”
            And then she wrote me a song and then another girl tried to eat me.

The End.

I've Been Waiting for so Long

Keep in mind that my writings are written to be read out loud as well as to yourself. I hope you like it.
Please comment at the end with any feedback or suggestions.

I’ve Been Waiting for so Long

         When I was little, love was pink. The soft, gentle pink of my mom kissing my forehead even after I had spit out my carrots on her lap just moments before. It was the pink of her letting dad hug her when he got home from work, even though the rank scents of gasoline and oil clung to his skin and invaded hers as they touched.

The pink crayons that all of the little girls in my class used to fill in hearts with as they dreamily doodled on their spelling tests- it was that pink. Love was mamas and papas caring about each other and about me. That was as far as my underdeveloped, cartoon-obsessed mind ever bothered to wander on the subject. Love was pink. It was so pretty.

When I became a big, bad junior high kid, love wasn’t pink anymore. It turned red. And green. And gray. A dismal Christmas of jealousy and awful aloneness. 

During those years love was so fiery red that it burned my fingers. I would involuntarily recoil whenever I got close to it, then I would hang my head in self-pity. I was a scruffy-looking housecat, trying to fit in with a zoo full of tigers—who all seemed to have mates.

During that time I liked this girl. I thought she liked me. Then she made out with my best friend. A lot. Was I bitter?

Love was green. So was I. But it was still red.

Junior high love was a cloud that separated the cool from the uncool, a thick gray cloud that caused a lot of rain to fall from peoples’ eyes. This love thing, that everyone else seemed to have, caused me to have an ashen stare whenever my friends complained about their dramatic, wonderful relationship problems. I was painfully aware that I was just a single philanthropist to them.

What do you get when you mix fiery red, downcast green, and overcast gray? The dark rust color of the bricks that stack to form my junior high, that’s what. How quaint.

Junior high was rough. High school was better.

I painted a mask of confidence, put it on with superglue, and threw away those dark December days. I may even have kicked that stupid building— just out of spite. I was done with love. Love was not done with me.

I met her eyes for the first time sophomore year. Eyes that wouldn’t, couldn’t ever hurt me. And every time I closed my eyes I saw her face, just as my friends had described to me through all the gray.

She didn’t live close by. Neither of us had a cellphone. We asked our librarians how to use this dusty technology called email, and that was how we communicated. Back and forth: one long, heartfelt message each day.

Almost two years passed. Our conversations were on and off. She had other boys during that time. I never had another girl. We found ourselves stargazing. I finally stole her hand. I finally stole her lips. Love broke out of its rust colored cocoon. It emerged with glistening wings, but I didn’t see its color at the time because my eyes never left hers.

         Looking back, I think that love was a glimmering blue at that moment. A bright blue that could’ve had a bright future. As time passed, though, it slowly dulled and faded. Her eyes never did hurt me. I just never nurtured that love enough for it to fly.

         It got worn out. A haggard blue. Haggard like when you run a mile in the biting wind and you can’t breathe. Your vision gets spotty, and you have to catch yourself on the railing before you collapse. Your lungs burn through the ice in your diaphragm and you cough for a much longer time than it took you to run that mile. You reach that point where you can’t physically run any further.

Haggard blue lasted for a long time. A few times I almost ran again, but my heart was never into it. You can become afraid to run again sometimes when you’ve reached that point.

After blue, love became clear. Colorless and lost. Something I could never wrap my arms around, something that my hands went right through whenever I tried to discover it again or feel its shape.

Recently, I discovered what color love truly is.

It was a quiet, warm night in O’Fallon, Illinois when a thoughtful friend of mine, aptly named Harmony, introduced me to a music album named “The Broken Bride” by a band called Ludo. The album has five songs, including four songs that tell a story of a man who is trying to save his wife’s life. The first time I listened to the album I enjoyed the sounds. The second time I listened to the album I grew from the words.

“I’ve been waiting for so long, to touch you and sleep in your eyes. And now as my heart’s beating so hard, I hold on, and keep you at home in my arms.” I heard these lines and wondered, “Well, just how long has he been waiting?” The way it was said, it seemed so heartfelt to me.

I had never paid enough attention to follow the details of the story before. I looked up the lyrics to answer my question.

Fifteen years.

It was in the first line of the first song. After his wife perished when she was in a car accident on her way to work, her husband dedicated the next fifteen years of his life towards building a time machine so he could go back in time and stop her from leaving the house on that fateful morning in May.

Fifteen years.

I kept reading.

He successfully builds a time machine, but as he sets off something goes wrong and he ends up in the Jurassic age. He is chased into a claustrophobic cave by velociraptors. He is sure he is going to die. He writes his beloved wife’s name on the wall, and goes out to face them. He is willing to risk being torn apart to get back to his time machine to try again to reach her.

At this point I couldn’t pull my eyes off of the screen. I was captivated by this story of pure devotion.

Blood. He is injured, but reaches his machine. This time his machine jerks forward, dragging him to the end of time. The world is in an apocalypse. The people have no hope, they are simply waiting for “The Dragon” to come and destroy their city, consume their families and themselves. “The Dragon” comes; the people have no way to fight back. They are being burned. The protagonist in the story sacrifices everything. He uses his machine to kill the dragon, he knew that it would destroy his machine, but he did it anyways.

Angels come to him as he weeps. They can’t understand why “his heart still screams” when he has just saved an entire civilization. He explains that he just wants to tell his wife goodbye. He knows that he can’t change her history. He just wants one more day with her. “That morning in May.”

The beings have compassion on him and use their power to send him to his chosen date. What follows is the last song in the album. The song is love. The love is white.

He walks through the quiet house, finds her upstairs asleep. He is overwhelmed with emotion. Those lines, “I’ve been waiting for so long, to touch you and sleep in your eyes. And now as my heart’s beating so hard, I hold on, and keep you at home in my arms.” Mean so much more to me now.

She wakes up, for her it’s just a normal morning. Before he can stop her she is out the door in her car, heading to work. He runs, catches up to the car, knocks on the window and says: "Baby, I thought I'd come along for the ride.” He will die with her. He can’t be without her again.

         The song ends with a slightly altered chorus:

I've been waiting for so long.
Time slows, and I take your hand.
To touch you and sleep in your eyes.
I hold you as we lose control.
Together our hearts beating so hard.
Hold on, baby we're almost home.

Together. I realize that his love, true love, is white.

White like when you’re under water and you see delicate rays of sunlight rippling in front of you. It is holding your breath and reaching for those rays, doing even more than you think possible, to be stayed— forever— in their protective warmth.

All I know is that this is what I’m reaching for. All-encompassing white.

Anyways, tell me what you think, and here are the links to the four songs that make up the story. 

Pt. 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n3KNmpPywY

Pt. 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpi728NhCpU

Pt. 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DwUUKTlMoU&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLF7923E457F925648

Pt. 4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7W4ZwhnJ24