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I was stung by a bee right between the eyes when I was casting one of those cheap little Mickey Mouse fishing poles. I froze as two hands lifted me onto a counter, and ******* dabbed chilled ointment on my skin. I sobbed quietly in humiliation. I was 4, and it was the first time I realized that Mother Nature could be a real *****. 

My father fell in lust (not love, he swore) with some curvy young something which hovered around the company where he and my mother both worked. He drove us back to Oklahoma, then left again. I spoke girlishly with him on a pay phone near an elementary school once, but I didn't see him for two years. I always knew the color of his hair was close to mine, but his face was a mystery. I was 6, and it was the first time I realized that you can love someone, even when you shouldn't. 

I swam past a little boy in the community pool, which belongs to the University in town. He told me plain as day that I was fat, blunt as a butter knife. I cried for half an hour lying on a hot beach towel in the sun, then all over again in the changing room. He was ten years my junior and I am now an adult, but to this day, I glance at my waistline every time I pass a mirror. I was 14, and it was the first time I realized that people can be unhappy with themselves, even when they don't need to be.

It was the second Saturday in March when my work phone rang, and my mother screamed that my stepfather was dead. She yelled at God the whole way home, angry with Him for taking her heart away. They were supposed to grow old together, she muttered, through thick curtains of tears, and I remember the ambulance lights, my aunt holding my mother to her in a way that only a sister can. My brother was silent and white-faced as my uncle kept repeating things like, "It shouldn't have been his time, he was too good of a man..." Some woman said later that my stepfather was already an angel, that he just needed to go home, as if that was supposed to help. I was 17, and it was the first time I realized that things happen for a reason, even if you don't believe.

I watched a tow truck haul away my first car, which still ran, but conveniently equaled my share of rent when drug across a scale and stripped for parts. I was hungry, I was tired, and in my head, I was all alone. I had never felt so burnt-out, used-up, and sad in all my short years. A few phone calls and hugs goodbye later, I packed my things and moved across the state. The feeling of leaving left me smiling and shaking like hell. I was 21, and it was the first time I realized that sometimes your only choice can be your best choice, and that jumping in head first makes the water look less black and cold. 

I fell in love with the same person twice. We let each other down, no doubt about it, but I was never the kind to strip a human of his dignity. I mistakenly hoped he'd have the same understanding. What I was left with was the feeling of being knocked down to my knees, when no hands had ever touched me, and I finally stopped trying to be part of a life I had no stake in. I was 23, and it was the first time I realized that heartache should be treated in a hospital, for it lies dormant inside every living body, deadly and unsterile, but it will never be curable simply because you can't touch it.

I was driving to work this morning and saw a little girl waving from the backseat of a Buick in another lane. I smiled and waved a little "Princess Di" back, feeling my heart flutter and rise oddly like a healing bird when she grinned happily over the back seat. And so I turned up whatever song was playing just then and said a little prayer for her. She was probably 4 (making me recall that bee sting), probably fresh to pain and grief, so I said: "Little one, there are things in this life which will make your heart bleed and your body sore, but hold on, add them up, and you'll see that living's worth the hurt because someone out there will love you, and you will love someone out there too." I'm still 23, and this is the first time I've realized what it means to be free.
 Nov 2012 Lauren
Samuel
And, best of all
                 neither you
                        nor I
        have the slightest
    desire to move
and we went for coffee
at the cafe round the corner
where the guy
who served us looked like
a wannabe rock star,
where the seats were cold,
a buttermilk colour.
I remember your lips
were strawberry red -
I wore a liquorice jet-black jacket
that was too small for me.
Then somehow
like a shirt in the wash
the conversation changed
to the other side of things,
what we both had written
over the days of dying summer.
'Plenty, you?' is what you said
sipping from the white mug.
'Not much, no surprise' my riposte,
glasses harassed
by caffeine-full clouds as I drank.
Then the fog cleared,
I could see again
sinking into your seawater eyes
and I muttered how I'd scrawl down
something about you
sometime.
This isn't it.
Here’s to another day.
Written: October 2012.
Explanation: A poem written in my own time, first uploaded as a Facebook status update and also available on my WordPress blog. NOT based on a real event, but written with a specific person in mind. Possible follow-ups to this poem may come in the future.
 Oct 2012 Lauren
Tallulah
Oh,
Sugar
Tendencies
To kiss those lips
Those hard candy hips
Delicately hot wrists
Floating chocolate freckles
& your bones like vanilla cream
I gulp up your every last sickly drop
Syrupy voice that still sticks in my mind
Conversations like a sweet nectar
A taffy tongue that twists & turns
I sip at your words like wine
But it can never be
Baby don’t you see?
I’m completely
Enamored
With a
*Girl
My first try with a syllabic poem- an etheree.

— The End —