Author: BelleF

Under the blanket of night, Mary wakes from her warm bed and tiptoes across the floor. As she patters to the tiny door in the wall, she feels herself shrink and shrink. With her now dewdrop-sized fist, she knocks. The door cracks open to reveal a little mouse dressed in a taffy wrapper tutu. “Hello!” she squeaks. “We’ve never had a guest like you,” pipes a wrinkled-looking mouse from behind the first, “please come in.” Gratefully, Mary shuffles into the foyer and peaks around. In the center of the room sits a table fashioned from a crayon box, surrounded by cotton ball seats. The tutu-wearing mouse excitedly leads her to sit. Cheeses atop bottle caps are set on the table, along with a blue, flower-shaped something on a poker chip. Sensing her confusion, the mouse explains, “It’s a special cake Dad found!” The mice and Mary eat and talk for hours, only stopping when the littlest mouse sicks up a dark fluid and feints. It’s chaos as the mice scrabble and squeal. Mary watches with horror as they drop, one after another. A wave of boiling nausea hits her, and Mary follows her friends into oblivion.

The Palestinian boy with a paper bird welcomes Israel with open arms. “What if we take over the land and leave a strip?” Israel asks. The Palestinian boy moved to a place surrounded with walls and is unable to leave. He doesn’t complain though, as his voice will not be heard. In fact, it may cost him his life. “What if we block aid, and leave them stranded with no help?” Israel asks. The Palestinian boy struggles to survive, as he is being followed by gunshots and false hope. There is no escape, no home left. “What if we kill them all?” Israel asks as the Palestinian boy lays still watching his home turn into dust and flames. Holding on to his paper bird, begging to see one in the sky.

Writing is my least favorite thing. Everytime I get in front of a keyboard to reply to questions or write an essay, I can feel my confidence shrink. Everytime I get frustrated over a prompt or essay, I feel myself die a bit inside and try to shrink away from the world around me and hope everyone will look away or disappear. I turn back into a child as I hear my fathers open threats of “I’ll give you something to cry about”. I struggle with writing because there is technically no one answer, and it makes me feel extremely small when I cannot even think of one. I am often praised for my writing skill and told to share it with the world, but when I hear it, I only feel disappointed. It makes me want to shrink away from everyone who reads my work because it makes me feel like a fraud. If I could shrink away from the crowd or disappear from the writing community, only then could I actually feel free and not suffocate from the growing shame I feel as I continue to shrink away in the empty words I lay on the empty page.

“One more!” says the coach. The players struggle to stand as that seems to be the only thing the coach knows. “Get up!” says the coach, as the players’ heads are ringing and dazed. “Just do it!” as the players start to question the coaches effectiveness. “Stop looking so sad!” while the players start to lose the love for the game. The players seek help from home but come back with the message “Give the coach a chance, he’ll grow on you”. The players start seeking a way out of the coach while the coach says “Be a man!”. As his best player gets a crucial injury, the coach says “you’re fine, keep playing!”. The player finds out his playing days are over, and looks to the coach for answers. Coach turns away and says “Who’s next!”.

I’m sorry to my mamita for being insolent and mouthy to her when I was younger. I was naïve and thought I knew everything there was to know about life. I doubted her cuando ella ya fue, vino y yo voy. I’m sorry for thinking she never loved me when all she’s doing is protecting and teaching me the ways of life. I’m sorry for not seeing her as human before, for not wanting to know who she was. Susana, mí mamita was a normal being too before she became a mother who gives unconditional love and devotes her life to us, putting us before herself. She accepted something instructions are not included in, and gave maternal love when she, herself did not know what it was or felt like. Being a mother is not easy they have hard days too, I didn’t see it when I was younger, but I can affirm they shed tears too. My heart squeezes when I see her cry in silence facing away almost embarrassed. Today I’m who I am, Considering I learned from the strongest and bravest person. Susana, mí mamita linda, the one I truly love with my whole heart.

He moved his finger against the inner surface of the sheet and made a six with it, and then an eight. This was his go-to when the nightmares woke him up, which lately was all the time. He’d always felt comfort from the numbers six and eight, ever since he was a boy. He knows to most it sounds silly, but he believes he has a connection to them. He was born in the sixth month of the year, on the eighth day, and grew up to have six freckles across his right arm and eight across his face. He was number sixty-eight on every sports team by coincidence, and his younger brother is exactly six years and eight months younger than him. He sighs, taking a deep breath. His mom had just gotten into a car crash, and all he can see when he closes his eyes is her face laying in a hospital bed. He’d even begun attempting to stay up all night just to avoid the horror of what awaits him when sleep arrives. He takes six deep breaths and traces another six and eight into his bedsheet before sighing and attempting to battle sleep once again.

I always feel her resentment on my shoulders.
Every time I enter a room, I ask her,
“What happened? Why couldn’t you love me in a way that I understood?”
She gives me the cold shoulder.
She looks me in the eyes, takes my tongue from my mouth,
and holds it.
She chooses when I get to speak
And to her liking, it was never.
“I beg to know is it because I remind you of yourself? Or am I different from what you wanted?”
She walks past me.
“I won’t call you mom, even though you are my mother. I won’t call you that.”
She walks out the door.
She taught me how to be alone a long time ago
“I’m sorry that I’m hard to love,” I admit to her
And she says I should be.

I look along the splintered wood of faux halls and melting faces, burning candle wax and bare, wooden beams, praising a man we’ve never seen.
If he were real, if He were real, I’d beg him to strike me down.
I am the daughter laid to rest, sleeping in her unmade sheets; I am the son you never wanted, but the sun you always had—and I have wept, and I have wept.
I wonder if you would have loved me more if I were always your son, but now I have learned it doesn’t matter.

It will never be less bad, but it will be easier to hold, less to weigh, as I examine the fractured mosaic and hold it close to my heart, and I know I will look back in shame, but understand,
I am not kind and I am not sweet;
I will speak and move and live like a man that was born a girl—and you cannot change that. I am the girl left behind and I am the boy finding her again. I am the amalgamation of splintered, fractured light you shine on us, always us.

The girl saw herself as something akin to a train station. People frequently stop by for a brief period of time only to hop on the next train and ride away. She saw this when her mom left with no explanation, never to come back. She saw this when her friends moved away for college, each slowly talking to her less and less. She saw this when her dad passed away and left her alone in a small empty house. Each time someone left, they took a piece of her with them. Throughout her life she had many romantic relationships. Each one always ended the same. They would meet and fall in love, she would entrust a piece of her dwindling soul to them, then they would leave. People took from her so often that pieces started peeling off by themselves. Eventually she was left with so little of herself she could no longer move. She was stuck alone at that train station, unable to get on a train of her own.

Sitting on top of my roof, I take in the view.
The neighboring house billows out fluffy smokestacks as the tenant bakes her annual homemade lemon pie.
A kettle of hawks circle nearby, hunting down their next meal.
Chattering squirrels scamper amongst the trees
Fluttering leaves dance with the wind, gracefully descending to the ground.
I nestle my fingers between the shingles while the wind plays with my hair.
Crack.
Slowly, I bring my eyes to the origin of the sound.
Crack.
Pulling away rapidly, I try to wedge myself free from the shingles grasp.
The chittering of squirrels fill the nearby trees.
Crack.
I squirm, I yank. I pull, I push. The roof does not free me.
The wind tosses my body from side to side.
Crack.
The sound of splitting wood echoes across the trees.
Silence fills the air.
Why did the trees stop swaying? Why has the wind gone astray? Yet, why do the smokestacks grow?
Acrid air fills my lungs.
And I plummet inwards with the roof.
My vision becomes hazed.
Breathing is a new challenge.
The only thing I make out,
Are the shadows of the hawks circling above me.
Taking in their new prey.