Written By Starlight

I’ll make us work.

Marimyana

“He’s gone.”

I feel my pain in flashing lights. Pulsing reds, stinging blues, slashing greens... Dull or bright, fast or slow, flashes or blinding images. I've experienced this for so long, I have a hard time explaining how I feel to medical professionals. "How do you feel?" "It feels like pulsing jets of pain lighting up in my arm. My chest feels like I'm being momentarily blinded by the brightness of the pain. It hurts so badly and I all I see is streams of dull blue." Is it really a wonder that I have never been healed of my physical pain? Instead, I've been told to take a higher dose of Motrin when I feel pain. Instead, I've been told I'm just feeling the effects of stress. Instead, I've been told, I can't be helped, since I don't really understand or know how I feel. I do know; I see it clear as day.

Marimyana

I tried to go through my shelves and remove extraneous notebooks and papers and all I found were bits and pieces of you. The parts I couldn’t hold onto in reality, tucked away in between college ruled papers and old journals.

Violence is not always a shattering blow to the skull or an empty gun cartridge. It is not always the bully or the dictator. Violence also stems from silence. A wordless yet deafening pain sprung onto the world because of inaction and silence. To me, there is nothing worse than that.

She sees the world, not as it is, but as it should be; she sees her surroundings as art. As a force that can immobilize and paralyze or inspire and motivate. The flowers are not petals and stems, they are color and shape and feeling. She overlays her world with paint splatter and charcoal shading. Life becomes bearable because it is now more than physical; it is spirit.

Marimyana ✨🌙

~ Anton Chekhov

I found a letter I wrote to myself a while back; it must have been three years ago. I didn't plan on reading it and crying bitter tears. I was planning on sweeping everything into a large bin and tossing it in the trash. But for some reason, I thought it might be important so I opened my origami folding to read my scrawls. It was written like a song - there were lines and stanzas, a repeating chorus, a bridge... So instead of a silent reading, I tried to remember the tune I gave it. It was a couple of minutes before I realized my eyes were stinging with salty tears and I couldn't see the words. It made me wonder how many other letters I had written, both to the world and myself, that were so broken. I write about tears a lot; I cry a lot in my writing. But how many of my shed tears did I lock up and accidentally throw away into a bin or trash bag? Don't my thoughts deserve better? Don't all of ours? Isn't that why anyone writes - because we deserve better than what we're feeling? If I could, I would gather all of my broken thoughts and give them some moonlight to live by. The sun would be too bright, too expectant. But the moon would be softer, more forgiving. I would let myself be consoled by the moon. I would do the same for you - I would share the moon with you so you would feel less broken. Maybe, we could even fix each other; fit our broken pieces side by side and find solace in the moon.

I just wish I was worthy of a name. If I was, maybe they might have kept me for longer than the test-drive period.

When she got to the summit of the highest mountain in her world, she set up the hammock she lugged with her the whole way. She dragged out her telescope and began to search for the missing planet. It was right at the edge of her vision, and waiting. A patient, impossible dream.