He listens as if my words are golden, perhaps some elixir he's been waiting all his days to hear. From what he says next I can tell he is thinking so deeply, already with a strategy that's several moves ahead of what I am capable of. And in his words are a kindness, a concern that is so quick that, for him, it is natural. This attentiveness is apart of who he is and that is, if I'm honest, the most attractive feature I've seen in a man for quite some time. And as the hours go by it becomes the best conversation I've ever had too, it flows, with listening and intelligent responses. I guess that's what happens when two loving people meet and connect.
In the blackout there were so many giggles. I guess it was challenging in a lot of ways, but somehow it only increased the funniness of it all. It was another reason to hug, to tell the sort of slow jokes that bring the chance of a cushion being thrown your way. It was how we were, the jokes, the singing and the cuddles... and the blackness just made it all the more wonderful, as if the joy was distilled into a higher form.
The baby is born to seek love, to be in that beautiful protective web of emotions that give, nurture and guard one another. They invite us to be the best versions of ourselves, to rewind, to cast away the cynicism that poisons and instead make the loving web their intuition searches for. I see their hearts as a compass, the needle spinning until it finds real love, their true north and ours.
I sit still on my chair, with no strength to move. My shaky fingers finally come to stop after running restlessly through my messed up hair. I bite down on my lip trying not to burst into tears. This not going to help, it's not going to change anything. I know anyone would laugh at it if they were present here right now. I know there's nothing to feel so despair over a C in a mock test which is supposed to be just for practise. My heart still won't stop racing fast, forcing tears to roll down my face.
I crumple the test paper in my fist and throw it away with all my strength. I shout curses at it, and finally let out my tears. How do you take something not to be a big deal when it is one? Do you just act alright because people would think you are over-reacting? My grades have been the only thing that made me visible, and it even made me 'Miss Popular' at least on exam days. Now I am here with a C, just one small letter written in red ink to send me back to being a nobody, a girl not even good enough to be a 'nerd'.
They called her a lunatic. They whispered behind her back and pulled their children closer when she passed. It was common knowledge that she had a history of mental health problems, although no-one was quite sure what they were. There were a plethora of layman diagnosis and depending on who you spoke to you'd be told in hushed, and sometimes not so hushed, tones that she was bi-polar, schizophrenic, psychotic or psychopathic. Mostly folks didn't know the difference between the last two and used them interchangeably. She knew they gossiped and stared, it made her uncomfortable and she wished to move. But a low-cost apartment was hard to find and so she had to endure the ire of the neighbors. She wanted to tell them it could happen to anyone, given enough pressure any mind can snap. And after what she'd endured in her life it was only surprising it hadn't happened sooner. If a kidney had failed they'd bring flowers, for cancer they'd fundraise, for her brain they isolated her with scorn.
Judgemental? Yeah, it is mental to judge. Have they ever thought of asking how it happened with a bit of empathy? D'ya know how far just a little love can go? Justice? Yeah, it was just ice, now that you mention it. Court? Yeah, I did feel caught, trapped really, all that fear made my brain shut down, all my thoughts fried up. I wish I could have just all sat down with everyone and talked about it. I'm not so good at letting the sadness show, I need to calm down. I get that. But that's what love does, right? It makes it safe to be sad instead of mad, instead of mental, instead of just ice when all I want is to feel loved.
It is my tears that keep my soul alive in the furnace of this pain. They cannot extinguish what has been, yet only carry me forward until a time comes when that searing pain is distant enough to forget more than remember, and maybe one day erase itself from my brain. So perhaps it may be an oddity to thank my tears and be proud to cry, yet if that's what saves me from becoming a monster, a person indifferent to suffering and sorrow, then crying is the smartest thing I can do.
Behind these eyes of dragonish glare, in a language carved before the age of ice, is the mind of the serpent king, the beast of the darkened cave. And because I cannot abide your words, those sounds that flame too hot for this blood, I seek to end all that you are and prevent anything you could be. This is the way of dragons and seek not to make me what you are.
The apple skins were so many hues, as is the way of nature, to bring us such beauty in variation. Each was perfect and imperfect, yet all were sweet within.
In those days of the slow burning war, the one waged on all of humanity, they sought to overrun our emotional drivers with stories that tugged at the heart strings and yet also invoked fear. The heart was their hook and the fear was the line tied to a concrete weight. Our response was simple yet effective, "Focus only on the money trail, follow it as a faithful dog," and it led us to those who were the evil puppeteers, the demons of the death and carnage we see around the globe among all of our international kin. In truth, there is only good, noble dark and evil... and in the end, that was the real fight, one without any frontiers. The good and the noble dark were everywhere, so were the evil, but the evil were perhaps four percent of the global population, so... once we got that straight, with a united "good" and "noble dark" we saw friends everywhere and peace was a slam dunk.
I guess it makes sense for the bells to be so huge, for their sound rolled through the village as if it were a special sort of thunder, one that could laugh. Those bell peals danced as if in ballet shoes, as if the sound twirl through walls and windows. Those bell peals were as echoes of giggles, of the sounds of children as their form their loving bonds in fun play. I loved them; I always did.