what's so amazing that keeps us stargazing

She would stare up at the stars each night before bed.  Examine each one closely, looking for the unique twinkle, the strange sparkle, the magic that was different for each.

Then she would close her eyes. 

Listen to the silence. 

To the sound of the universe ripping apart and the sound of the bees humming around, trying to keep the order.

Einstein had said that if bees were to go extinct, humans would follow in four years.

That's high school.

That's a few breaths, a few twitches of the eye, nothing more.

That's how connected we are.

She thought of her yoga teacher, the sound of the room breathing energy, creating light.

She thought about the first sound in the universe, the electric calm that filled the space.

Omm..Omm..Omm..

The sound of the honey bees.

tough love

She was beautiful in a way most wouldn't understand. They could see her symetrical face, they could observe the graceful indents of her waist, the arch of her back and curve of her hand, but that all meant nothing because they couldn't see her.  It was as though she lived in the awkward pause of existence between being and not, as though the society was her sea and she was constantly struggling to come up for air.  She could accomadate this world, but not live comfortably within its bounds.

Perhaps it was because she was too harsh.  People couldn't understand her honestly, couldn't take in her bitter flavor, couldn't swallow her words that seemed to be drenched in alcohol and lit on fire. Her casual conversation was most people's 3 am drunk phone calls to a detested ex-husband.

But she didn't know how else to exist.  How else to be human, how else to survive. It was her honesty that made her beautiful, she decided.,  When she looked in the mirror she knew exactly who she was looking at.  Her sculpted arms, the sharp dash of her collarbone-there was never a question.  Looking in the mirror gave her answers.

But she was the only one who would ask the questions.  She filled her life with wants and needs, lists of goals to fufill and clothing to buy.  She stoked her closet with corsets and lace, with dresses that fell upon her hips like waterfalls, and heels that punctured the earth mercilessly.  But they did nothing for her. Everybody looked, but nobody cared. And eventually she stopped caring too. And forgot why she had begun collecting in the first place.

Collecting things because she couldn't collect people. 

 And all she ever really wanted was to be loved. And for somebody to say so.

But nobody dared to say those words

to a person they couldn't really see.

submerged

She wore gauzy clothes that drifted with the wind, in pale shades of iris and indigo, lace dripping off the ends and dancing in the shadows of the creases. In the top drawer of her antique dresser she kept a tiny glass box filled with silver glitter, and she would throw it in the air and dance under it before she left her room. It was the magic that would weave a shell around her, weave a shell that would protect her from the real world.

To her, the real world was everything dark and dirty and scary. The vibrations of her parents shouting, the cold, empty feeling when somebody stopped holding her hand. It was the awkward stares that twisted people's insides, it was the crude jokes of class clowns.

The only place she felt safe was in the water. The ocean was her favorite place in the world, and she felt far more composed floating there than walking on land. When she was above the sand, above the shells, above all that was hard and concrete, she knew life would be okay. In the comfortable rush of the waves, she knew she was born a mermaid, cast ashore and given heavy weights for legs because of some unthinkable sins of a past life.

Please forgive me, she would cry to the sea, Please let me return.

But the ocean's angels only turned their scaled tails away, letting her tears fall in with the rest of the castaways.

You must live the life you've been given

they sung her, you must live the life you've been given.

And when she asked why, they whisper

Because we must, because we must.

We looked back, you see, we looked back.

We are only whole in the ocean, on land we are a pile of salt.

infertility.

She ate oranges with the peels still on. It felt rebellious and tough, and she knew it was good for her. She figured it into her health karma count- it counteracted the cigarette she indulged herself in each month.

(Even though the taste made her cry. Even though the process of lighting it haunted her. Even though she despised the memories that flew out of it in gasping ringlets.)

The blackened ceilings in her childhood home, holding her mothers shaking hand as the cancer devoured herfragile lungs. But she couldn't help it. It was an addiction, but not to the smoke. To the luxury, to the glamour she felt when she held that trash between her fingers, lifted it between her lips.

She felt like a trashy bohemian  poet, the kind of girl who would try to sleep with Kerouac and Ginsberg. She would fix herself black coffee, poured in a stained, chipped mug, and balance a blank notebook on her lap, a pen held delicately in her right hand, waiting for the words to come. As the bitter taste collected in fuzz on her tongue, she waited for the words.

They never would come.

Then she would become frusterated, angry, furious. She would lick her lips and tug on her earlobe, she would wring her bony fingers until her fingernails were white. She would stop her feet and talk to herself, trying desperately to birth some revelation on the human condition.

The only passion she felt came from the lack of life in her.

She wanted stories to come, she wanted words and thoughts and life to just spill out of her.  But as she neared the end of the cigarette, all she ever got was hacking, a cough that echoed her mother's last sounds. A cough that haunted her, that made her crush the ash onto her notebook, burning a hole in it.  She would down the little coffee that was left, and be jittery when she stood.

Then she'd go inside, grab a few sleeping pills,

and get the best night's sleep of the month.

insomnia

She liked feathers and raindrops and stars, and the way her mother said "dinner".  She liked haunted houses and kittens and folk music and crafts.  She liked boys who looked like girls and stores that smelled like perfume.  She liked the way the sun rose hesitantly each morning, and the way the moon transformed.

It was ironic, she always thought to herself as she stared, fascinated, at the numbers flicking by on the digital clock, how much she enjoyed sleeping, and the concept of it, and the way it felt and all, but how little she actually slept.  She would make up excuses, that she was too busy, or talking to somebody, or...or....(they all were lies). 

The secret was that she hated sleeping at night.  She fell into a dreamlike state of life as the numbers climbed towards their peak, and fell back to start again.  It was as though sleep was irrelevant, since she was already dreaming.  And the next morning, her eyes heavy with regret and sadness, her body would reject the day, her mind would reject the nerves that dashed around, craving those refreshing hours.  But at night she would sit at the glowing screen and type on, type faster, trying to evade the hours as they came, feeling satisfied and exhausted as the night wore on.