As I walked up to the brick building in the sweltering heat of the summer, I stopped on the hill to take a look around. I was surrounded by busy French streets and the smell of a bakery torturing those who passed by. Looking at the building, I saw a sign that read “Auberge Internationale de Québec”. When I walked inside I was greeted by a building as warm as the heat outside and with a glossy wooden interior. The building, itself, was an adventure. With no signs, except those in foreign script, each room was a mystery. After checking in, there was a strenuous trek up three flights of narrow, wooden floors that creaked endlessly. I endured as my suitcase became heavier, heavier, heavier, and lighter, finally. That night, after having reached the end of the hallway and located my room, the walls became illuminated by only the city lights and the glow of the moon. The buildings seemed to breathe and come to life with their phosphorescence. And although I had to get up early the next morning, I saw on my bed that faced a tall window. Through that window, the city lights could see my legs curled up into me as I watched without blinking. A bridge cast its glare on the river below. As cars passed through the city, their noises were barely audible over the music that blared from a stadium nearby. The city spoke to the music, as it’s heartbeat became the pulsing bass that could only be heard by those who were truly listening. Warm summer air poured through the windows and my eyes couldn’t part from the current view. Hours passed and sleep still eluded me. But I did not care that I had to wake up at six in the morning, because I was with my best friends- the stars. I did not care that I had to wake up at six in the morning, because the city wanted to see me. I did not care that I had to wake up at six in the morning because I had found complete comfort in this youth hostel 945 miles away from my home.
Tag Archives: writing
Through Their Eyes – Poppy Lam
Through their eye’s everything is magnified,
A light touch is a mighty blow,
A flick of a switch is a raging storm,
A small ember is a seething hell,
They feel the need to convert experiences into masterpieces
Be it photos, drawing, music or writing
It may just be a snap of a camera but it’s their way of capturing their life and seeing it from a new perspective
It may just be a few sketchy lines but it’s how they portray their emotions and discover themselves
It may just be a few notes but it’s their sole way of communicating with the world
It may just be ink to a page but it’s their emotions soaring over the white landscape
The need to fill the obsidian darkness which lingers within
To drop the mask, stand back and watch it shatter
So you go and judge but we won’t be the one’s coughing up the ashes of a burnt out flame.
The Artist – Brooke Safferman
16 colored pencils lay before your handsthey are trembling with anticipation;
you are trembling with anticipation
a masterpiece waiting to be revealed
but you are the only one who can manifest it
and make it come to life with the power of your genius mind
the clock ticks on and suddenly you shake your head
there’s too much pressure to do the things that must be done
but the desire of making, of creating, of bringing to life, has begun to overtake you
dancing, your fingers are dancing as they slide the pencils across the page,
shapes and shades being formed by the colors of passion rather than that of the lead
I, too, originated as one of your masterpieces – and for that, I am forever grateful.
I’m Sorry – Alexandra Mayer
I am from a defeated town
with deadbeat afternoons,
lawn chairs and lemonade,
and church clothes that cling in the heat.
Our bones are heavy.
I told you, I loved you like
the shimmering but separate rainbow fish swirl of oil in the puddles of asphalt parking lots.
And then I left.
You told me
you wanted to get closer, closer
so we could breath each other in.
And then, like that, three years went by
without you.
I was in Philosophy of Ethics when I read your facebook status:
“I LIED. AND SO I’LL BE FERRYING THOSE OF YOU I CAN WITH ME TO THE NEXT WORLD. I’LL POST A BRIDGE BEFORE I LEAVE.”
The Professor went on.
Heraclitus once said, “Everything Flows.”
Plato revised: “Everything changes.”
I called.
Your voice sounded like a meteor tearing into earth.
I heard wisps of gold cloud your eyes, when you said,
“I’m high. I’m high. If you don’t love me, I’ll hang myself from the rafters of hell.”
Silence dangled over us.
Later you told me you could feel it
wrap around your neck
like the noose used on your Grandfather.
I didn’t think of that.
I called the police.
I wanted you to be okay.
The officer was kind to me.
His voice sounded like velvet.
Then, for six nights, the stars dried out my eyes.
They warned me–
‘Only the dead shine.’
You called,
finally, from Silver Hill Mental Hospital.
It was your Mother’s Bipolar Disorder that got you there.
But it was your Father’s black skin
that made the officer with a velvet voice
think it was okay to hurt you.
I’m sorry I didn’t believe you when you told me
he pressed his fists into your gut
and plunged his hands around your neck.
I’m sorry, you had to send me pictures. I still can’t believe you did.
It looked like Jupiter’s rings tried to split you in two pieces.
I’m sorry that I can still drag my fingers across your scars.
I just wanted you to be okay
because I saw a life like hydrangeas and summer sunsets in your eyes.
and I remembered the elm tree where we took branches for seats and traded secrets.
And I knew just segments of your soul,
but I could see you’re bursting with a history and a story.
I just wanted you to be okay.
But he just saw a black body,
said you were a ‘dangerous madman resisting arrest.’
Sleeping with God: “Minnie” – Danielle East
I remained too much inside my head; I began to lose my mind. –Edgar Allen Poe
The Antebellum
I
“Would you marry me,” I begged him to say yes. I spoke the request I had been wanting for so long.
The more the world wanted us apart, the more we gravitated towards each other. The world hates what cannot be comprehended. Beasts and human? An abomination, a sin. The Lord clenched his chest and fell to his knees at the sight of such an un-Godly social experiment. Yet it was not our fault that we fell in love. Like Adam and Eve, we knew right from wrong, but it was temptation that brought us upon one another. It was always temptation that made the most bias and greatest fall and lose strength.
I didn’t care if it was morally wrong to fall for whomever I loved. With all the wrong gone on in the world, how could true love fall in this category? It was only hypocrites, self-loathing hypocrites that defiled everything that was good in the world. Oh how I hate people like that. They go around living their lives with their heads held high, nose at an angle and spiting on everyone who they think is beneath them. It’s just child’s play for them to detest me. I know God hates ugly, but you don’t even have to dig deep in my heart to know I have no love for them.
“Don’t you love me?”
Anyone might think I just hate white folks, except my lover, because they are white and the world is hateful, but I don’t too much like black folks either. None of us will ever leave slavery if we don’t all band together. You don’t need to be self-educated to know right from wrong. Right and wrong ain’t something them book with them English words in it can teach you. Yet, some even know right and wrong, but can’t live by it.
Despite my hatred for the world, there was only one true person that held my heart. My Clarence dear. So loyal to me he is. Greater than any man in the South. I can hardly remember a time when I did not cling to my lover. He always gave me that feeling of hope. Something in him always told me, even though we were in the midst of a troubling time, there was still a beating heart in the world.
But don’t none of them Negroes like me since I have been with Clarence. To what I suspect, it may be jealousy at the least. I believe many of them desire to be with him or if they have to, be raped by him, just something to make them cry at night and wish even more they were dead. Even if I tried, I wouldn’t be able to hold a nice conversation with one of them. My whole race card had expired. None of them merely talked to me. I am a black sheep, exiled by my own kind. No one to relate to, no one to braid my hair and discuss whatever the hell with.
“Would you marry me if I was white?”
I burst out with a different approach to make the question more suiting. Clarence I knew loved him. Although he was taller than average, blond-headed and blue-eyed, he had my heart. I know, slave masters kept wenches all the time, but our relationship was different. I was more than just a bed mate. He wasn’t a racist bigot. How unusual and unbelievable it was, it had been too long under his protection to know him in any other way.
To be a person born into the slave trade is as like being conceived at the gates of Hell. My burnt crisp skin that which was cooked by the devil’s roasting pan. The way he fiddled at my hair with his pitchfork to conduct a nappy mess on my head. And the way he placed me in the world at such an un-Godly time.
Being black in America when a system constantly works against you is a curse. My appearance was not a choice but; white folks treat us as though we willingly picked to jump into this lake of fire. Unfortunately, my outward appearance will not change in the years to come. Nor will the way I and all the other Negroes are treated because of it. It’s preposterous that at this time a white man can steal a horse and be hung because of it but kill a black person and live.
But there was no need for me to complain. Unlike my other equals that produced their only means of surviving in the field, I did not work. My master, he did not pay attention to if I got the work done or not. An unusual black woman I was, but I did help out in the kitchen. My hands had not touched a crop since I was eight years old. This is when I took to the kitchen like my mother and those mothers before her.
This is also when I took a liking the Master Clarence; who I only called Clarence. And when he would call, “Minnie, Minnie… You stay out that field. They don’t need you. Too pretty to crop, to pretty to pick.” So I say he took a liking to me too. Harmless or not, his heart was set on me. That’s why I’m set apart from the rest of the Negroes.
To say I was in love with Clarence was just an understatement. What would I do without him, and him without me as his companion? Being with my love Clarence was like sleeping with God.
“Answer me!”
His silence left me with the question of whether he loved me at a different level than he had before. Laying in the lush that be in his master quarters was where I stayed. The rest of the Negroes were outside in the slave quarters. This is where they stayed at night but, many of them did not remain in the homes. But none of them were stupid enough to run away and not come back. Just recently, many that choose to roam the land at night did not come back.
“I…,” he said.
Lying next to Clarence was like being closer God. His whole physique and personality is the opposite of me. The way his hair flows from his scalp to create the cows lick at the front of his forehead. I always wondered why the white man’s hair came out all straight like grass and got real oiled up. And the fact that my hair was dry like all the other Negroes. I prayed for hair like his.
His fair skin that contained little patches of freckles on his face and arms. His jaw was cut and structured like the no one other. His high cheek bones looked like they begged for me to rub my lips upon them. And I enjoyed them, even though sometimes all I could taste was sweat.
His height is what set him apart from the other white men I Knew in Forees County. His height, counted from the scratches marked beside the barn in the field were higher than any man on the plantation. I had never actually measured him but by the height of other men I had seen, I guessed her was seven feet. His bulky body and the awkward way he walked was much different than those of the Negroes. The cotton picker men smelled of hard work and hard days gone by. I preferred Clarence’s aroma to theirs.
He completes me. Whether be a good or a bad thing. His love matters much more.
“How would they react, “Clarence asked as he pushed his hand into my grasp. His eyes my caught my glance and I could see the sparkle in his light brown eyes. “When the time comes and we can. Don’t over think things. Good things come to those who wait Minnie.”
The sound of his voice alone was comforting…But his answer did not relive the empty hole in my heart. I rolled over in bed. Facing away from Clarence. Screeching voices, horrible moans, scratching at the roof of the home and my beating heart were the sounds that filled my desperate soul. I couldn’t stand the sounds, especially that out my heart, but I had too. I starred at the blurry wall. I could not let him see me cry myself to sleep.
rain & i – Elena Barrera-Waters
it’s 5:56 in the morning
Aerial Views – Matt Grydzuk
And so you were skipping stones across ponds
“Every time I walk past a balcony I think of throwing my phone over it.”
Same, but I think of throwing myself over
For just a split second, then realize it’d be too up-front
Too gaudy, and then it sort of fizzles out
And so you were skipping stones across rivers
Playing records backwards to get the real meaning
“I think maybe I should leave,” you said
But I could never understand how someone could fit
That much sadness in such a small thing
And so you were skipping stones across canals
“They’re all just intersecting lines,” you said
We’re all just intersecting lines
You followed up with
I think that maybe people don’t know you
As well as they should have
And so you were skipping stones across lakes
Hands tied behind your back, you were writhing
“I don’t want to be here!” You said, taken out of context
Were placed anywhere else
You didn’t know how to address matters outside of literal meaning
So you just stopped talking
So you just stopped addressing the bleach stains
And so you were skipping stones across deltas
Frozen over for a long while, now thawed, you turned to me and said
“I think this is where depression stops and starts”
And so I am standing at the edge of the balcony
For the first time thinking of throwing something else over
Thinking, “Maybe”
“Just maybe, one can make a monologue out of anything.”
You Called Me the Sun – Ivy Juniper Manchester
The world does not breathe until I do.
I send out love like I know what I’m looking for but the plants and animals soak in the rays, never once wondering where the heat comes from never once feeling blessed but god isn’t it just so human to pretend? When it rains they beg me not to be sad and when it thunders they all run and hide. But when it doesn’t, and the sky stays clear, I don’t matter again. The curtains are pulled aside and thank god the people can continue their lives. All i want to do is love you but if i love you too much, you spite me for my warmth; when I give you space, you beg me to come back.
Forgive my indiscretion but why do you keep saying it’s okay?
Three Quotes to Live By – Alex Esterline
Springtime, for me, is a time of renewal and self-improvement. I get this newfound motivation from watching the snow melt. Much like the flowers that will begin budding on the trees, I find myself attempting to plant seeds in myself. One way I’ve been doing that is by picking out some important quotes to keep in my mind. The three I’ve picked are the three I try and live by at all times. I’ll be sharing them with you and I hope they’ll help you sort some things out or reach for something higher:
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
-A.A. Milne
Written by the author of a childhood classic, this Winnie-The-Pooh author writes a beautiful quote. I have a tendency to look back too much and wish for things that won’t ever come back. I regularly fall in love with places and feelings that I might not get to re-visit. At first glance, this quote reminds me to be grateful for having experienced these moments and feelings at all. But it’s become such a big part of my life that it actually reminds me to take in every moment from now on in great detail- so that I can one day look back and marvel at how hard it was to say goodbye. I hope it does the same for you, Reader.
“Cause a little trouble. It’s good for you.”
-Angelina Jolie
I’d first like to take a moment to thank Angelina Jolie for existing. I’d also like to thank her for her recent quote at the Kids’ Choice Awards. Her quote focuses on something that I have yet to accomplish- living far outside my comfort zone. You see, my idea of “trouble” is staying on Tumblr for 4+ hours. I’m going to try and use this quote to remind myself to not overthink every single decision I make. The best part about this quote is how much everyone could use it. We’re constantly being confined and sheltered to the point where our lives are sometimes so unexciting. Maybe next time, I won’t stay up until three in the morning doing homework, only to get no sleep. Beyond just worrying about good grades (which do not define a person), I am generally compliant with things that I do not necessarily agree with. This quote will serve as inspiration to speak up and act for things that I believe in.
“Don’t count the days, make the days count”
-Muhammad Ali
A professional boxer, Ali shines light on one of the hardest obstacles to deal with in life- Time. This quote seems to remind me of my fleeting youth and the oftentimes overwhelming desire for something to happen. I tend to lack patience (something I’m working on), and regularly “count the days”. I realize now, that I should be focusing that same energy on cherishing those days that I’m counting. I firmly believe, now, that if you count the days- you’ll miss each and every one of them. I urge you to take every opportunity that comes your way, and start making the rest of your life count.
I hope you take these words of wisdom and apply them to yourself. Happy spring!
Observatory – Haley Ingram
I love it here.
the view reminds me of life.
The sky the way it paints over our hands and onto our skin,
The way the color doesn’t mix together as much as an artist would like it to.
The lead in our paints is heavier than we were ever capable of lifting, but it’s all we had.
It’s all we are fed.
We closed our coffins with the nails we’re chewing on in hopes that
You need to be undead in order to make a move-
But I don’t want to kiss death anymore
He leaves my body to rot
My teeth hurt from grinding against him
He has violated
All of us.
We are all iron cast replicas forged in the fires of our own hell.
We paint our bodies with colors of the sky and call it identity.
Nobody likes the night
Everyone is afraid of the dark
Why am I afraid of the dark but find so much comfort in the makeup of hell?
We call ourselves artists,
There is no artist.
There is only nature and our mimicry,
We feed on the idea of existing originality.
Why don’t we open our coffins?
Let’s swallow our nails and puncture our throats
To allow the nervous words to spew into one another.
Till death do us part-
He’s not getting between us.
We are survivors in a world imprisoned by
The impressionable weight of shackles
And strength to carry them.
We are convicts in that we are happy together
So that cannot be.
But in this moment.
I love it here.
The view reminds me of you.
The way the sky paints itself and the willingness to relinquish power.
The way I don’t want it to be easy to touch you
The way no one can touch you.
Painting doesn’t make me an artist
But it makes you a masterpiece.
I can lift you over my head
And in this moment.
Life is worth living.
Inkling 