zhuàn xiě

I want words to rhyme
And the world to matter
But between the two
I prefer the latter

Sometimes I dream. I dream of him, of her. Of him and her together. I dream of them touching and kissing the way we do together. When I wake up I wonder if he thinks about me when he’s kissing her, or if he thinks about her when he’s kissing me.

I don’t say these things when I see him. Time is to precious to waste on petty fears. I try and convince myself that it never happens, that it was an old habit he’s stopped. You need someone to love sometimes, and I wasn’t around for so long. It’s logical for them to have had relationships right?

However, every once in a while his thoughts slip and I catch a glimpse of me except I have black hair, sharp teeth and red eyes. I feel empty when this happens, like my identity has been mushed with someone like me.

If you think about something enough, it really bores a hole in your heart. The hole in my heart is growing now, allowing disturbing and wrong thoughts to flow right in. I feel good turning to evil. I wonder if this happened to her. I wonder if he likes her because she’s evil. I wonder if he hopes I turn out like her.

We argue now when he’s around. We meet and talk, then we disagree on something small like the way the wind is blowing or how I’ll die. The arguments run deep though, and what I really mean when I’m yelling at him about what he had just said that offended me is that I really hate it when he lets those thoughts slip. That I really want to be the only person that belongs to him.

As my past sister, I wonder if she thinks the same things as me. I wonder if when Tyler comes home she wonders why he’s thinking about me when they kiss or why he pictures her with brown hair, straight teeth and teal eyes. I wonder if the hole in heart is larger or smaller than mine. I wonder if she dreams of him. Of me.

Sometimes I wonder why nothing is ever right in my life.

I ran into my room and slammed my door. I couldn’t help but cry. I kept crying. I didn’t think any one human being could cry this much. There were so many tears. Endless tears. I thought tears ended after a certain amount of them were cried. I always figured they were like banks. And you had so many. People would work for them, happy moments was a job for tears. You had happy moments and were rewarded with tears. After all, you can never have happiness without sorrow. You could never have love without hate. Life was all an oxymoron, a paradox.

People could be mean, but then again, that was life. And only being fourteen didn’t help with the stress. That was all I ever had for five months. Stress. I sound so self-centered. I sound immature. I hate my life. Why couldn’t I make my own decisions? What was wrong with that? Did I honestly have to do everything my parents told me to do? Did I really have to believe in everything they do? Was that what children were meant for?

I hadn’t fought with my father in a very, very long time. And after today, I don’t think it will ever be the same. I had never had a fight with anyone this large. He is so against me making my own decisions. I can’t make them anymore. I can barely breathe. I feel so suffocated. I thought we, as kids, were taught to start to learn to make our own decisions. I thought that we, as teenagers, were taught to take responsibility for our actions. I thought, as adults, we were taught to live out our lives to the fullest. So then, why, is my father, making me get an abortion?

I was dropped of in the middle of the desert when I was 6 years old and told to continue walking straight for 2 miles by men in identical uniforms and with big black guns. It was me and a truckload of other children, all they gave us were individual bottle of water, barely enough to last us. There were a couple older children in our group, the oldest at most 14 years old. We walked in the intense heat for what seemed like forever. A couple children fainted, and when all the bigger ones were already carrying unconscious kids on their back, we had nothing left to do but to leave them there in the middle of the desert with no water and no where to go. I beat myself up everyday for that. For not being big enough to carry the kids, for not being smart enough to understand what was going on, and for never venturing out to find them.

It all happened during the financial panic of 2015. Every little girl dressed in perfectly pleated navy blue skirts, pristine white blouses, and who had braids adorned with silk ribbons and every little boy wearing his recently ironed trousers and dress shirt are well educated in how the United States went from democracy to dictatorship. Even I, a child of the rebellion, was quickly trained to be a quiet beautiful object of the new government.

It’s quite simple, how it all happened, actually. The recession turned out to be worse than we all thought. It lasted for one year, than two, and before you know it we’re in The Second Great Depression and our mothers and fathers, recently fired from their day jobs, turned quickly and shamelessly to cultivating their backyards. Before we all new it though, our parents just simple could not afford the backyards in which the food for their children grew. So rebellion thrust out from the hearts of the people and the system collapsed.

Swiftly and quietly, high class and well known members of society moved in to take over. According to the books, it all happened quite peacefully. From what I still remember, however, it was actually much too violent. They moved in and destroyed the angry citizens and quieted anyone who ever spoke out. The killed my mother and father, as well as the mothers and fathers of many other young children. Delinquents and children of the rebellion were sent to abandoned cities to live on their own, grow up, and then be used to do the dirty jobs. The rich and obedient continued to be rich and obedient. The new government thrived off of the hard work of everyone else and me… I was a special case.

They took me in because I was “especially beautiful” and “like a gem hidden in this trash can of people”. I do look quite strange and different, I guess beautiful, even I’ll admit. I had lightly tanned skin that never got very pale, even in the cold winter months, white blond hair and bright blue eyes. They called me Vanilla, because of my nearly white hair. The Prime Minister had me trained and took me in so I could marry his son, James. At first I wasn’t so pleased with this. I had friends that had suddenly disappeared, parents who had been killed before my eyes. But you learn to shut up, even want to, when diamonds, riches, and beautiful people are placed in your grasp. So I shut up, and here I am now, 10 years later.

She saw him there, walking in the outskirts of the community just the way he used to. His limbs, long and toned, would move with the utmost grace and care. Which seemed almost ridiculous to her… why would he be walking in enemy territory trying to keep a nice appearance? Not even she wanted him here anymore.

This angered her. She had to get to the bottom of this. Why? Why was he back, after yelling at her, telling her she was a mistake and… how deep did all of this go? What was she missing?

He once told her to continue looking at things with a human perspective, that she’d find the answers to her questions much quicker if she continued down that path. Was that what she was doing wrong? Had her perspective changed after all this time without him? Without a constant simple factor in this mess of an equation, was it impossible to come to a conclusion?

His lazer red eyes turned away from her and he disappeared like a shadow as the sun goes down on a warm summer evening. May sighed, what could she do to prevent herself from making a mistake now? The new her would go back to sleep and pretend she never saw him, but the foolish human her would definitely run after the person she just could not possibly forget. The one who had screamed and yelled and drove away. The one who finished her off.

Once again, sighing to add to the affect, she threw on a coat (the sun was setting) and her surprisingly unworn boots (Eileen must have taken them, against May’s will, to be restored) and walked out the door and down the steps. The thick mugginess of the air after the thunderstorm and the slightly damp brick roads greeted her. She walked casually, hands in pockets, eyes barely focused on the ground, until she got maybe a mile away from home. The blurry ground changed occasionally, from brick roads to dirt roads to just patches of smashed grass and sand.

She followed where she only could guess he’d been. She felt the presence of shadow boy, his red eyes and wise mind destroying the world around him without even wanting to. While letting her body feel for his presence, she let her mind go wild, trying to figure out the human perspective. Her mind was turned into a train, memory train, in which she was the conductor. Sitting at the front of the train, she watched all of her life go by, all the choices, the feelings. Suddenly she was at a break in the tracks, and she had lost her directions. This choice was to be made solely on her own.

She heard his thoughts for just a mere second, maybe only a word or two. She stopped, focused her vision, and through the dark she could see an even darker figure facing the ocean. She had walked so far! And managed to find him!

Ever since I’ve been here they’ve asked me lots of questions. So many I’d be able to cover the Great Wall of China with them. Pretty cursive letters written in blood on old stone. Is that how my life will be remembered? By the questions they ask and that I rarely have coherent answers for?

The questions began with simple things about my human life. The one that I remembered of course. Who was I? What did I do? What did I like? Was I in love? I was me. I did what I did. No, didn’t love anyone. I could have given them answers at the time, but I had chosen not too. Out of fear they wouldn’t love my bland old self, maybe. Maybe I never wanted to go back. Who knows? Certainly not me, I can’t even remember my mother’s own name.

The questions then began to expand from present to past. They’d show me things. Little things. Like the painting in the Grand Hall of History. Or the music box I supposedly received as a small child. They’d hold my hands and sing to me, bringing back memories from times I didn’t know existed. After that, the questions delved into the realm of a time behind us all. Do you remember that day, May? The day when we had tea in the garden with Gemma? How about when Mother died? Do you remember the pain? No, not really. Maybe so. I don’t really know.

Then I became nostalgic myself. I suddenly went from embracing this new life to exiling myself from what I had been thrown into. I missed my human mother. My human bed. The simpleness that only that world could understand. They didn’t understand it. They’d even get angry with me. More frustrated, maybe. Why them May? Why do you even love them? Must you miss them now? For reasons unknown. Unexplainable emotions, I guess. Why not?

Sadly after that it came close to all of our deaths. What was it like, dying that is? What’s it like coming back to live? Living and living and never ending? Is it nice?

That’s when I was truly stumped. I truly realized then that I had lost everything. This self, my old self… the self that had existed somewhere in the middle. Gone. All gone.

Dying? From what I remember it was sad. All I could see and hear were people asking for me not to go. Coming back? I didn’t really know I was coming back until someone pointed it out. Picture being somewhere in your 30’s and trying to remember your childhood. You only really remember when people remind you what happened. Living forever until you end it yourself? I wouldn’t know, because it never felt like I lived forever. Is it nice? Not at all.

Elliot curled up under her quilt. The quilt that her mother made her when she was still pregnant and in love. Yeah, that one. Elliot tried to pull the feelings she lacked from it. Where was the love? Where was the love she once felt?

Tommy had disappeared so long ago. She wasn’t quit sure what had sparked her interest in the boy once again. Maybe it had something to do with Logan bringing it up, or she just felt lonely and missed what she had. Either way, she was intrigued by him.

Her apartment was impossibly small and cramped, but she adored it. She had done everything in her imagination to get her. To a fashion school in Paris. How hard she had worked. Being here now, nothing could be any better than this.

Quickly, she threw the quilt on the ground. She didn’t need the love. She didn’t need what had been there before. It disappeared from her life for a reason.

Yeah, for a reason.

Tommy…

One Day

The sky in Paris was absolutely splendid, but it took a turn for the better at night. May was in absolute awe, her bright teal eyes locked on the stars. Eileen walked up beside her, leaning in on the balcony railing. “Wonderful, no?”

“I never want to leave here. Ever.”

Eileen giggled softly, “Things are never as great as they are the first time.” The girl gracefully edged into the spot between May and the balcony. May’s eyes never left their spot on the sky.

“Not something like this, this never gets old.” May breathed out a sigh of wonder. Eileen shrugged.

May finally looked down then, her eyes locking on to Eileen’s. “Would you say I work the same way then? I’m never as great as the first time?”

Eileen was silent for a moment, analyzing carefully what May had just said. She smiled, understanding finally.

“One day, we’ll live under these stars. One day, you’ll never have to step foot off of this balcony.”

“As long as it’s with you.”

I’ll never stop thinking

Daniel frowned as he opened his door. The last person he had expected to see at his door was staring at him with a crazed expression on her face. “You look like a fucking teenager.” Elizabeth didn’t say anything. Instead she continued to stare into his eyes. “What?”

“Can I come in?”

Daniel shook his head, “I don’t have time for this right now, Eli.” He began to close the door but Elizabeth held it open, “No. I need to come in Damien.” She gave one large push and fell on the ground along with Damien.

“C’mon Elizabeth. I have somewhere to be.” He pushed off the ground. Forcefully she pushed back down on him and looked into his eyes. “I do too, I need to be r-“

“No! Elizabeth! I have a date, I gotta go!” he yelled. Shaking his head he struggled to get her off of him. Elizabeth got off of him and sat on the ground beside him, “A date?”

“Yes,” he got to his feet, “a date. I’m done playing these games with you. You obviously don’t feel the same way about me.”

Tears started to form at the corners of her eyes. She had never felt so heartbroken in her life. ‘Is this how he felt, this entire time?’

“What the fuck? Why are you crying?!”

She stood, “I’m sorry. I took too long didn’t I? Daniel, you don’t love me like I love you anymore do you?”

“What are you talking about Eli?”

“i didn’t,” she mumbled, “I didn’t realize this is what love is… I feel so empty when I’m not with you. I didn’t know just because I thought about you every second of the day it meant I loved you.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, “I was so stupid.”

His eyes opened wide. She looked up into his cobalt soul. Broken and wrong just like hers. Beat down to a pulp and left on the side of the road to heal. Elizabeth never thought there was someone who felt the same way as her about the world, but she finally found him. “I love you, every piece of you. I don’t even care if you don’t love me anymore, I’m never going to stop thinking about you. I’m always going to be yours, whether you go on that date or not.” She looked down at her hands. She smiled, “I’m talking like May.”

Daniel put his head in his hands and lifted her to look at him, “No, Eli. You’re talking like you. Like you’ve been all along. You don’t have to put up a front when you’re around me. This you is so much better.”