[January 31 Workshop] Immolation (A Collection of Six)

I

the sand is grey.

i keep trying to focus

on other things but

what i seem to notice most is

that the sky will change color

and the sea will roll into blue

and the sun will march

to an inaudible beat

and make its way

across the flat sky

but the sand is grey

and always will be.

II

he wasn’t even five minutes old.

it never escapes me that

he was here for

less than 300 seconds

and only twenty seconds

of my life

had him in it

and then he

just

suddenly

wasn’t, anymore.

i can feel his hands around my throat

III

sometimes i wonder what it’d be like,

to have my twin brother.

some days i wish for the company,

and others (as terrible as this is to say)

i’m happy he’s dead.

i think i would have killed for him

in high school, just like anyone would

have killed to be something more

than the loose, embryonic thing

they knew they were.

sometimes i wonder what it’d be like,

only sometimes.

IV

the wind

ruffles my hair as

the sun paints the sky

oranges and pinks.

my mother stands beside me.

asking me what’s wrong, i can

only manage the sort-of-answer

that leaves her with more questions:

“can we ever truly be ourselves?”

the words flutter in the wind

like a memory.

she pauses for a moment,

beautiful in her repose.

she is

his mother, too.

i tend to forget that.

“i miss him too,”

she whispers.

V

the sand is grey.

i whisper his name and look at the sky.

i imagine him up there,

looking exactly like me,

nodding and glancing

at his brother, grieving over

the brush of a shoulder…

Nicholas…

i wish

i wish this were

i wish this were true.

VI

if someone asked me if i had a brother,

i can answer two ways.

i can say, honestly, that i never had one.

or i can honestly say

yes.

Paint and Canvas

I come to the library to think sometimes, when the world needs to lose its edge. And that’s where I am, writing out this little piece of eventual nothing. Knowing that in due time this will become illegible and invisible makes this harder to write. I keep wondering what the point of it all is.

But then I remember the reasoning behind my eventual career.

I’ve been in college for a little over two weeks now, and my reinvention keeps springing to mind as my primary focus. Yes, I’m here to learn – my parents made sure I knew that before I left – but I’m also here to change, to grow, to meet people I never would have met, to do things I never would have done.

I sincerely wonder if anyone that I called friend in high school would recognize me anymore. I’m a completely different person.

They say you shouldn’t grow up too fast, and for most people that adage seems to be true. But I’ve grown a lot in the past half-month, discovered depths of self that I never knew existed. These four years are my delving into the Marianas.

This is a reworking, a rediscovery of who I am and with what I choose to define myself.

I almost can’t even bring myself to write about high school. It seems so little, so small, so insignificant in the past tense. I never would have told you, my freshman year, that I’d be the person you see in front of me today. But that’s the beauty of things, sometimes.

The earth is not a cold dead place, though we live in paper towns. And the towns aren’t really paper – I mean, the Jack-in-the-Box is gonna be on the corner by the grocery store whether you want it to be or not, and the grass will be so green some days that it hurts your eyes. But the people, the paper people, in that little vapor of a place. They blow where the winds take them, they write their lives on themselves, and in time the ink becomes impossible to read. But we seem to forget that we are paper for a reason. The color that is all around us seeps into our everyday lives; it’s in everything we do. The paint that is still wet is absorbed through our paper feet. We are vessels for something far greater than ourselves, and we feel that Great Something coursing through our veins sometimes at a current so fast that we feel we must explode or evolve. And today I am green from the grass and purple from the little flecks of stone in the marble and I shine from the metal I will touch later in the parking lot.

And I am so very satisfied with my little collegiate paper life.

This is my time; this place my place. Whether or not I truly thrive here is my decision and mine alone. No one else can make it for me - I control my own destiny. "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."

Deep breath. One, two. Close my eyes.

Jump.