There’s a sign posted outside of the classroom door,
Printed in big, bolded, letters
Forming the words:
“No Phones.”

What?
No phones?
A student, a girl, to be more specific,
Has her phone out in class.
“No phones.”
“But I need to text my mom!”
Excuses, excuses.

What?
No phones?
A student, a boy, to be more specific,
Has his phone out in class.
“No phones.”
“But I need to text my dad!”
Excuses, excuses.

“No phones.”
“I need to text the girl who never replies.
I need to call the girl who never answers.”
The room falls silent.
A heavy, chest crushing,
Silence.

A few days before,
A girl was found hanging by a thread.
She was the girl who needed to text her mom in class.

“No phones.”
“I need to talk to the boy who never speaks,
I need to contact the boy who never goes out.”
Again,
The room falls silent.
A bone crunching, skull splitting,
Silence.

A few days after the girl,
A boy was found with a bullet in his head.
He was the boy who needed to text his dad in class.

Wait.
What was that?
No phones?

Someone once told me about an artist who couldn't paint.
Where plagiarism took over the tip of his pencil,
but he didn't draw, or paint, or create.

The kisser whose lips left behind previous lies on your neck, making you believe them.
The copying of work from computer screen, to your math homework due next class period.

That painter you told me about?
That anonymous artist of that beautiful abstract painting of the sky within your heart, and the stars dancing in your eyes?
That's me...

I've tried to find an original beauty to discover yours.
But..that's the issue. You're like me.
You don't have original beauty.

Your portrait has swollen kissed lips,
love-bites on your neck,
and claw marks on your back.
Reminding you of who you already are.
Reminding you of who you never wanted to be.

How can you explain something you've never done?
How can you explain the experience of flying in the belly of a giant, metal bird?

Their wingspans the length of a train-cart, their engines the size of your mom's car.
Holding many passengers within its safe, metallic walls,
being up so high in the air at about 40,000 feet.

How can you explain flying in the belly of a giant, metal bird?
Being so high in the air, you cross the tracks of another metallic bird who was up just a few more feet than you,
sandwiched between where there's no existence of clouds, and where the clouds begin.

Kind of how you are when you sleep.
Sandwiched between the thin sheet and the thick comforter, keeping your body secure from the cold.
Then being swallowed by the white, delicate, fluff *****.

Leaving only you, the clouds, the bright blue sky, the sun, the people.
Now you can experience the feeling of what it's like to soar in the giant, metallic belly of the bird you're flying in.

Time.
Time is such a gift of excitement.
Time gives us life.
Time gives us color,
and sound,
and feeling.
Time gives us anything...

Love.
Love is such a gift of adrenaline.
Love gives us something to believe in.
Love gives us hope,
and faith,
and trust.
Love gives us anything...

Death...
Death is such a gift of heartbreak.
Death gives us something to fear,
and cower,
and deny.
Death gives us everything.

But...

Time gives Love a certain span, before Love gives Death its end.
Love gives Time all he's missing, before Time gives Death its end.
Death is given the end of Time and Love, but gives them a gift right back when the time is right...

Life.

The people who aren't reborn again,
become one of the infinite stars that sprinkle the abyss of night.
Those who are reborn lose all memory of a past life.
Only to remember a complete stranger, and know something only that person knows.
An unremarkable dream you've had,
only for it to be something that's happened before.

A winter only a past life being could remember.
A tale only you can find familiar, but you know you've never heard it before in the life you have right now.

The glimpse of light you see in the winter;
is a star telling you a tale,
to always love the glimpse of light.