My Writing Blog

Hope is a thing that’s a boulder -

Held roughly on my back.

I cannot know what it is, asunder

And yet, my hands I’ve cracked

At barest night, in moonlight’s breeze

Hope keeps me from good rest

It repels complacency’s ease

It’s stolen sleep, relief, protests

Hope taps on my window

Hope screams through the door

Hope gnaws on my big toe -

It’s the mold in my floor

(Death met me once, in springtime’s brace

Sweet smile, without a word

She waits, the rock a weight unsafe

In a tin can

When the sky goes dark and the winds come in sideways

The cold bleaching the colour out until everything is black and grey and white and grey and grey and grey

Have you ever seen the horizon forget itself? Hazing over

Cornfields turned the colour of ash

Slush under your tires

Nothing in sight save a dark road and flecks of white?

alone in our kitchen,

a skip in my step

and a giggle in my chest

that leaves me like the ashes of a supernova

My room is silent. The same number of cars seem to rush down the road, the same farmer tills the soil, the seasons still change, white fading into green fading into red back to white.

There is a murder. There are several murders. People scream no more. People beg, bashing against an unyielding system, trying to create the tiniest crease/crack/tear - so they can slip in, so they can fix what’s broken.

My phone is a bright white. I’ve had it for five years. It whispers so many things into my ear, but from my window I can’t tell you if it’s Before or After.

I heard there was an attempted coup.

It feels monumental. It feels like an empire is cracking, like there are splintering fault lines, like this is a history book moment that my children might ask me about as they go through their homework.

I hear about it after it’s done, mostly. It’s odd to stumble in on something this important - it feels like someone should have told, but there is nobody to tell, nobody for miles. So I jolt up, when I switch from my PDF to my socials.

It’s odd, to feel fault lines, and to wonder if their cracks will form. It’s odder still, to not feel them at all, but to know they sit under the earth -

“You don’t know that much, do you?”

The eight year old blinks, with my hazel eyes, and asks “what do you mean?”

“You can close your eyes. You don’t even think about the costs you heap on everyone around you.”

“What do you mean?” She asks, tears in her eyes “ what do you - I do care! I’m not like that!”

Incidents spring to mind for me - and they spring to mind for her to. I remember it. “You aren’t good enough for everything you cost Mama and Papa.”

“That’s not true!” She replies. She’s stuffed her hands in her ears like a moron, like that’ll keep the truth out.

“They don’t actually love you, you know. You’re a child of obligation.” It’s easy to make the word stretch out, to have it play in all her nerves.

“Stop!” She screams, high and shrill, and just like that she leaves.

And I blink. I say nothing, have said too much, and she wipes her tears away before she fades fully.

The girl in front of me is older this time, but our eyes stay the same.

“That was cruel.” She says, like she wouldn’t do the exact same thing.

“It was true.” I say instead. Because that was something inarguable - because if I had so much as a inch of space, I knew I’d wedge myself through.

She sighs, and leans against the back wall. Her eyes are hard, flinty, and they feel like weights on my shoulders.

“Remember to keep on top of your work. And don’t start skipping sleep - if you do, it becomes a problem. And try to pay attention during geometry.”

“I won’t do any of it, you know.”

“I know.” She says. “I remember. You’re useless.”

My hands clench, suddenly, and I can’t help but look away. She doesn’t even look angry, is the thing - she looks resigned. Tired.

Accepting. Just rolling over, expecting me to do all the hard work.

“You could do it too, you know.” I hiss, and her eyes flash. Something that tastes like victory rolls through my veins, and I continue. “You could be better. In fact it’s your job - your the older one after all. You have experience.”

“Shut up.” She says, her voice shaking. “Shut up. You don’t know what your talking about.”

“Yes I do - I’m you.”

“Shut up!”

She grabs for my wrist, and I freeze. She swallows, before letting go, and waving me away.

She’s tremendously angry, this one, when I appear.

“Hello. Didn’t go how you hoped?”

“Don’t be cruel.” She snaps. Oh, wasn’t she a hypocrite.

“You should treat yourself better.” I continue. “Really, it’s be hard to be much worse.”

“I won’t make your life easier just cause you want me to.” She says, and I control the urge to roll my eyes.

“Us at thirteen was kinda unbearable, not gonna lie, so I won’t blame you completely for not controlling yourself. But we could have handled that better, too.”

“Enough.” She snapped. “Do you have something to say? Or can I go back?”

“I’ve said it already. Be kind to yourself.”

“I am kind. Too kind. That’s the problem.” And I try not to flinch - as much at thirteen was bad, fifteen was worse.

“Be kind enough to do the hard things. Everything good comes at a cost, after all.”

“I can’t.” She says, abruptly, helplessly. “I’ve tried.”

“So keep trying.” I reply. “You have nothing to loose. I promise you.”

She bites her lip. “Does it work?” She - I - ask. It’s an easy answer, and one I already know I’ll give.

“Not as well as you’re hoping. But it isn’t nothing, either.”

She sighs, and turns, and I grab her wrist. She looks back up to me, her shoulders tense.

I run my fingers over her arm, gently. “I am proud of you. Of what you’ve done, and what you can do.”

She leaves, then, with suspiciously bright eyes.

After that, another hazel eyed woman passes through. And unlike me, she is a woman - proper, not just past the cusp of childhood.

She presses me into a hug. That is... surprising.

“You’ve done so well.” She chokes into my shoulder. It takes some time to relax into her grip. “And you’ll do even better.”

Her fingers clear away the tears in my eyes. “Will I?”

“Yes.” She says. “I am happy - so happy, I can choke on it most days. You will never be as warm as you’ll be when you are me.”

“You promise?” I ask, and I feel like a child again, but she gives me a bubbling laugh, and a smile.

“I promise.” She says, and holds me tight until it’s my time to go.

“I’ll miss you.” I say desperately, and she smiles.

“You carry me with you. Just remember to treat her well.”

But. You ask if you’ve ever made me happy. And I can’t answer you, because there is no grand moment I can call upon - there is no big happiness waiting in the depths of my memory, be it because I forgot or because it’s not there (and do not discount the first, please. you know me)

But I don’t know how to communicate to you that your face in my mind brings up lurid shades of joy, brush strokes of serenity, a breeze made of, yes, happiness. How there is a rare sense of peace when I give you a hug or when I jump on your back, how I have feared so very much but I have never ever feared you.

Making a bomb of me

(there was a spark of steel against flint

And I raged

and raged

And I wish I were made out of cinders

Because ash-people must be kinder