There is a fire:
Five foot four, with tongues of flame,
sipping beer, tasting glass, spitting shards.
Four walls, no doors, one window, shrouded in darkness.
The heat builds, smoke rising, obscuring the way out.
“It’s nothing,” you say,
“It’s not my fault,” you say,
“I’ll stop this time,” you say,
an incantation for the last sixteen years.
It’s the same dance, accusations and defenses
laced with excuses and empty promises,
we’ve all been doing it since I can remember.
My father leaves the room,
cowering through the flames licking at his heels,
showing me the way out, lifting the latch to the window.
He does not take me with him;
I stay, even though I know better.
I face the chaos with the bravado of a child,
grasping for clarity,
gasping for air.
Shaking, spineless, silenced.
I cannot fix it,
I’m helpless to change it;
I clean up, business as usual, just let it pass.
Eventually, you get well.
The fire is quiet,
a flickering flame in a candle, burning sweetly.
The only evidence of the fire is ash
swept and gathered in dusty corners.
My father returns from his hideout,
welcoming you back with open arms and loving memories.
You get out of bed, you do the laundry,
you go to work, you feed the dog.
You remind me that there is no fire,
there never was any fire,
there won’t ever be any more fire.
I used to believe you when you promised to stop,
when you said I could trust you,
when you battled the flames even though you were the fire --
and you won.
But embers glowing brightly don’t die,
they’re never fully extinguished.
With the tiniest gust of wind, they can be rekindled,
growing and morphing,
moving, burning, suffocating,
cyclical, unpredictable
chaos.

Questions about the untouched past,
answers only found in reverie.
The secrets of the universe,
erratic, enigmatic,
locked in a garden of fear and memories.

To grow a flower is simple –
Air, water, sunshine.
And quell the storms,
as seedlings sleep beneath the earth, 
growing, blooming, alive.

But people aren’t flowers.
And your words are a pretty soliloquy,
until you’ve realized that the very world 
that once seemed a lovely garden,
is now a lost menagerie.

A mirror might not have answers,
nor can any map lead you home.
Because no matter where you go,
you can’t forget the past,
how you were grown alone.

I've spent what feels like a lifetime
trying to ease my way into an English world.
The world of Chaucer and Eliot
and vocabulary only Merriam-Webster knew.

I declared a major.
I don’t know if it really matters anymore,
because when it’s dark
and the campus is empty
all I can feel are the forgotten words floating overhead like stars,
whispering for me to go home,
rectify the official white papers.
Become something else;
become anything but this.

Become who?
Someone who can’t feel anything
but the weight of the leaves
as they crunch under the lilt of their laugh?
Or the one who cries outside their advisor’s office,
because they read something so beautiful
yet still so small,
an unshared treasure?

Why write? Why speak?
I don’t know the answers to either.
Because when you are writing, you are speaking,
and one is almost as good as the other.

But when the words get caught in the back of your throat
and your feet are blocks of concrete,
unable to move
or think
or feel —
Is writing any better?
Will writing save the invisible,
or the insignificant
or the unheard?
The ones who disappear?

I've spent what feels like a lifetime,
trying to force my face into the light
and take a major that isn’t really mine,
dashing off poorly executed poems and flash fiction,
grasping for something that might work.
But in the end it’s nothing
and I am still just as
lost.

Where do you go when bow your head and shuffle past,
with your hands deep in your pockets,
and you feet in the faults of the earth,
and you head in the sky?
When the sky is dark
and the trees are a hazy silhouette against your wearied trust,
a colorless horizon,
can you still see the sun?
Through an open window
or under the door,
a crack in the wood,
splintering you in two -
Light.
To go away,
find a place
veiled under a map,
hoping to find answers,
but instead
there are only veins and roads and vines
twisted together
until it's impossible to see which is which.
You found a cave where you can bury yourself
under a blanket of soil,
and sleep until the light awakens you.
Under your skin are moon beams,
effervescent,
refulgence.
Unread
Untouched
Unseen.
But behind your eyes -
nothing
and everything.
Still searching for
something,
somebody,
but finding nobody
being anybody
least of all yourself.

When I was fifteen, there were only three more years
until I could leave.
I numbered the days like some people count calories
or steps
or breaths
onetwothreefourfivesix
counting until there was no air left.
Out of breath, out of step, out of line,
one more time;
try a little harder,
push a little faster,
be a little better, a little stronger,
smarter
sweeter
tougher.
Braver.

I'd spin in circles until I was dizzy,
around and around andaroundaroundaround
before starting all over.
Out of control, too fast to ever really stop.
And then back to the beginning again
where I first began,
reduced to less than nothing,
just a slip of the person I'd hoped to become.

When I was fifteen, life was a game
where there were winners and losers
and then people who didn't ever quite make it.
Neither a winner, nor a loser,
neither a hero nor an enemy,
just nothing at all.

I ran around, afraid of everything,
hoping if I ran fast enough, whatever was lurking in the shadows might never catch me
consume me.
I ran until one day, I slipped and fell down the rabbit hole,
past where anyone could see
or hear
or reach.
I fell through the cracks I sidled around everyday walking home from school,
books in one hand,
memories in the other,
clinging to both for dear life.

I was just a sprig with dead leaves and a damaged stem,
no petals or blooms,
flowerless,
my roots growing in the wrong direction, defying gravity.
Empty hands reaching up into the air,
grasping for something to pull me back to earth,
push me forward into the world.
Desperately searching for something to believe I was enough,
believe I was worthy.
Believe I wasn't a mistake,
a surviving **** in a blossoming garden.
Hoping.

When I was fifteen, there were only days
weeks
months
Every minute accounted for
yet all forever lost in one sleepless dream,
in one fell swoop.
Time lost, standing still, forgotten,
my watch the only thing keeping each day from running into the next.

I am not fifteen, anymore.
I have found my roots,
my time,
my place,
It's safe, it's home.
There's hope.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Time is not forever,
but neither is this.

It'll be okay.
You'll be okay.

i cannot fly
for i am lost,
in a world i do not know
and have yet to understand.
emotions are trapped deep in my throat,
caught in my chest,
intangible wisps of half-formed words,
bent and misshapen,
thrown together like mismatched furniture,
never with the intention of being articulated.
we are souls on the verge of being,
but not quite enough
to be.
walls hover above my head
closing in,
as stones crumble beneath my feet,
rocks tumbling,
disappearing
into a fissure of emptiness below.
in isolation
i fall,
surrending,
before the earth shatters
into millions of pieces
of other broken souls,
and we carry each other
as burdens on our backs
even though we are all damaged,
flightless.
the earth is 7 billion humans long,
the circumference composed of pain, suffering, healing;
souls piled on top of souls,
and we are caught,
caged into a life we didn't agree to live.
we did not sign a waiver in the last moments before our conception,
or in the delivery room,
or when our faces were first greeted by the sun as infants,
we never had a chance to cease to exist altogether.
my wings are clipped short,
and i do not know how to fly--
i'm thrashing against the sides of my cage,
my songs of joy becoming tears of sorrow,
of desperation and faltering hopes.
i'm bursting at the seams
that were hastily sewn by others,
people i hardly know.
they patch each incision with torn bandages,
that come undone with each breath i take,
only to be mended again.
we are fighting to save ourselves
whilst wrestling with the darkest creatures that only ever existed in our childhoods,
our youth being a fleeting memory,
scattered by the wind.
it has become a mindless struggle
as they pull you
downward,
binding your wrists behind your back,
as you stumble
helpless to catch even yourself,
let alone anyone else.
for how can you escape from the darkness
when you cannot fly?
and how can you fly,
when you do not even know where the sky is?

-j.m.

there is life beneath the surface
beyond what we can see.
i sink,
holding my breath.
my eyes clamped shut,
afraid of what might be found.
i do not want to fall
but i do not want to rise, either.
i am small in comparison to it's vastness,
it's significance.
it is a never-ending chasm,
and my feet blindly search for the bottom
as the darkness swallows me whole.
when i open my eyes,
i can see a narrow tunnel of light
gathered at the surface in the distance,
sparkling.
the sea is a torrent,
and comfort is found in it's constance,
it's strength,
it's ability to **** off our fragile souls
until nothing is left but a shell.
i do not want to leave.
but my lungs,
they need air
now.
i want to breathe
i do not want to sink any further.
and i am fighting
kicking
not ready to give in.
i am being pulled down by a monster
who looks like me,
coming out from the depths of the water.
and there is no longer wonder and mystery
in the darkness.
i wrench my body away from it's claws
still bound by the weight of it's grip,
and i am tired
worn
but unwilling to stop moving toward the light
until i rush to the surface,
emerging out of the water,
fear pumping through my veins.
there is a moment of waiting,
calm,
before it becomes clear that
the storm is over.
i am alive.
i am free.

-j.m.