Willowshine

he wrote his suicide note on an etch-a-sketch board. elmo-red frame, golden paint drawing out the classy cursive logo, white bottle-cap knobs, and a fake digital screen. a child's dream. it took him six hours to revisit his childhood for the last time. [it didn't take that long because he didn't know what to say, but because he wanted to finally do something right.] he carefully turned each knob, forming darkened pixels into letters, letters into words, and words into spider-silk-thin sentences that would rip and fade, just as spider webs did. his words faded a bit when you accidentally knocked it off his dresser so you could take it

your table of contents contains four stories. none of them fairytales. there are no candy-cane forests here, no castles paved with the happy messages inside of fortune cookies, no palomino horses with coats that can only be described as 'silky' and nothing else. this is about you and him and a staircase. the first story is for the days when you're sliding up the banisters of the school from your happiness because on the steps of that stairway that you now swear lead to heaven he gave you a two-point-three-six-second long hug. you counted. [along with those three extra 't's in that text when you said this was the bestttt day ever]

looks like i'm falling back to being the therapist again, doesn't it? unintentionally retracing my steps to the white tile floors which have been counted by patients far too many times. to the desk where i hated sitting at for so long. [minus the pay but especially minus the satisfaction] i'm here for the moments you can't take it anymore for the moments when you want me to piece together your mind until it's all 90 degree angles and straight lines. for the moments you ask me to repair the damage those invading badgers did to your heart. for the moments when using duct tape to stop your circulation doesn't seem like it's such a bad i

  she is the girl who speaks so quietly her voice is encased within the subtitles [without capitalization] no one hears her whispers. 'speak up,' someone tells her. but she does not because she knows that if she is quiet--no, silent--for long enough she can disappear. after all, who needs the subtitles? sometimes she compares herself to a wallflower one with pastel, made-to-fade colors that are like wisps of white from beaten-up, archaic, rectangular chalk dusters. but maybe she is even less than that. [barely] 'wallflowers are supposed to have unnoticed beauty, right? they're flowers.' she reasons. 'so someone like me would be a

'are you sad?' you ask. i despise that word. sad. it is, in essense, the nightmare of most english teachers (and myself, although i am not one) it is destined for the phrase 'word choice!' to be written above by a scarlet almost-empty pen destined for those points deducted that determine the difference between an a and an a-. destined for that moment in a speech when you wonder why such a word slipped from your mind to the open air. it is also a sickeningly accurate summary. the group of letters that comprise the word 'sad' never quite seems to cover everything. it is only three letters, after all s for the consonant that takes

  'everything's theoretical' i tell you. 'it's not,' you say. 'we are here, we exist. this is real. god, you never make sense.' [i want to ask you for how long we are here? because nothing lasts] 'maybe i don't make sense.' i reply. 'but what if i do?' you have no answer for my only slightly rhetorical question. i do not need to ask you why you lack an answer. i know it is not because you cannot comprehend--maybe even fear--my apparently senseless words. it is because of the meaning beneath them. i remember times before this when i would inhale silence and exhale a year's worth of metaphors or when i did the opposite, living in si

the metaphor we can never escape is the plastic smile and one could argue that it's put to good use. we teenagers use it so frequently, do we not? but we do not only use it--we take it, and once we're done, we throw it away. quickly. we created it, after all. it starts in the beginning. we plant the materials ourselves--betrayal, upturned corners, and stereotypically dead eyes and let them thrive in overgrown victory gardens. alone. we pick them send them to the factory and begin the mass production. within the walls of the factory, the pieces are handled mixed assembled by innocent children. some of which will buy the ver

this was us. discussing what we should do with a suicidal girl. me: 'contemplating suicide is a lot more common than you think.' you: 'it is?' me: 'yes, it is.' and then the moment slid by without further notice this was not too strange to me because i knew you were not depression's friend not even depression's acquaintance. sometimes, i doubted that you had ever met it. [but then i remembered that you are human, and the happiest ones keep the best facades] i knew we both had facades yours infinitely better than mine, most of the time. but you had no need to hide your years of being alone you always had a new person, fresh f

        Jane's hair turns into some kind of personal tornado around her as she turns her head to yell something. She and I are biking home from the library, because no high school student can possibly ace their finals without studying. "Callie!" she calls, "Watch out for the bump ahead."        "Got it," I reply as I coast over the gap. "Hey, after the last finals tomorrow, do you want to bake cookies at my house?"        Even though she's biking in front of me, I can sense the smile on her face as she replies with a "Sure. Snickerdoodle?"        "Of course. What else?" I say in a scandalized vo

I. i have this tendency to hide behind tall buildings. skyscrapers are home, but your lap is the most familiar place i will ever know. II. when Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, he did not account for your smile. the brilliance of the two can blind, subsequently terminating his patents and deeming light fixtures illegal. III. every time i'm on the highway past midnight, i'm reminded that the difference between us is a 300-mile span of lampposts. i'm sure that Thomas Edison didn't consider this, either. if he had, he would have used that mind of his to invent teleportation. he wouldn't want me stranded in a bed too large for a

I am young when I first hear the word 'adoption'. I am so very young, perhaps three, maybe four. I accept it easily when my mother sits me down and explains that I did not grow beneath her heart, but rather in it. I nod my head, smile big, and ask when I'm getting a little sister. My mother kisses me on the forehead and puts her hand on my head as she stands up. "If you wish on a star, Sarah, maybe she will be here very soon." I practice my wishing until night's companions wink merrily in the sky. Dear Anna, I turned seventeen just recently. I thought of you when I woke up, and I wondered if you were thinking of me. I like to think that you

you can never find your glasses. there's a pair in every room of this house, yet you insist on using the same rusted, foggy pair to unlock your vision. you are the man who exaggerates the already tallest of tales & you are the man who crawled into the chapel on 52nd avenue that one june night in 1983 with blood covering your cheeks and pouring out of your nostrils. you don't wear flashy clothes & you breathe deep and heavy and you're the one who taught me that life is the bitch who talks about you in the locker room, you just have to get used to her. one of these days i will make you proud. i will send you on those vacatio