#pc13prompts

without gravity to weigh us down

we’ll dance among the stars

with nothing to erase

the marks you’ve carved

without wind to blow away

Around birthdays, Christmas, or valentine I get swallowed by this empty feeling There are people for whom secret parties are organized Special attentions and grand gestures of love and affection There are people who are given their days of glory Their moments in the sun Showered in converged attention And I will never be one of them

I try not to mind, not to look But, nose stuck to the window Fogging it with my breath I stare at those worlds I wish I belonged to A sinking pit in my stomach Something rising all the way from childhood Suddenly carried back with a vision so clear That I'm seven again Standing in the hallway behind the glass door Looking at my family in the living room Self-absorbed and laughing As if they had fully forgotten about me

I had sneaked out of the room that I was grounded in Stealing painful looks that are now branded in my brain I can still see them around the dinner table In the yellow light hanging from the ceiling And the sporadic blue flashes of the television My sister sitting in my chair Glowing with the ecstatic halo of a successful scheme And me, silent, excluded, having taken the bait Hook, line, and sinker Having been so maddened by injustice That I looked to be the rowdy one The louder I got, the more I made her right And this rage lingered long in my chest Stoked by her smug, delighted smile Her constant provocations behind their backs

It tasted more bitter than anything I've known Like biting into a rock, trying to swallow it Gravel grinding between your teeth I'd cry long into the night, from isolation and fury Because I was the bad child, the noisy, the dark, the messy Because I'd lost movie time privilege Because I hadn't deserved it Because it wasn't the first or the last time

I've never known jealousy as arid as this one I had both been framed and pushed out of the family picture I learnt that way that you don't get liked by being truthful It's all an act I was not calculating enough for She looked and played the part And reaped the benefits It was the same in school, The cool kids were the cruel and shallow ones The ones whose birthday invitations were sought after like golden tickets I've never wanted to be like them But I couldn't help but envy the comfort That seemed to come with such falseness

From all the hues Passion

assaulted her heart's eyes,

Her wishes were Earthbound,

stars have failed her enough

empty promises, night wishes,

Her breaths were tantalized,

A reflection shone her path

Light was blinding, unwanted,

But eye-opening, and warming -

Unexpected want unsheathed,

A myriad colorless rainbows,

countless stardust sorrows,

and ashen emberless hearths,

Erased from memory, overwritten,

have gone when a beat returned

And enflamed became her heart,

She saw her self for the first time,

And finally this time, she promised

But only this time it was to her self.

love has been blinded / by bad intentions far too / many times, no more.