Monsters at sea

The waves aren’t as loud as I thought they’d be.
They rage, but they are distant,
Muffled,
Soft
And seperate.
I’d call them kind if it weren’t for the way they battered my boat.

It’s quiet where I am.
Too far for even the gulls,
Just me and the beasts
That are too afraid of the light to come up for a conversation.
It’s comforting.

I wonder what they must be like sometimes.
I don’t imagine they’d have much colour;
there isn’t much light to absorb and reflect where they swim.
They’d be a cool grey,
Constant and solid in a way the ocean could never be.
An experiment in form,
Limbs and eyes that I could never hope to understand,
Beautiful.
Monsters of old,
Slayed by heroes,
But unforgotten by time.

I stick my toe in the water,
When I’m not reading or painting,
And they send up a breath,
Lifting my foot from the water
Perhaps a second too soon.

I don’t think they like the storms.
Their dark waters are thrown about,
Exposed by the searing lightning.
I can hear their cries,
A pitch or two above the wind,
Desperate and afraid,
But they do not leave.

Their heavy weights push against the boat,
When I fear capsising,
And they mourn when I cry,
Low and melancholic.

We’ve never met,
And I doubt we ever shall.
They are ancient,
Hold far too much knowledge in their gazes
For me to bear.

But when I loose a sketch,
Or a poem,
Stolen by the wind,
And dropped down below,
The bubbles that return in the shape of
A bird,
A leaf,
A sail,
Let me hope
We may be friends, regardless.

 

 

 

Featured image found at: https://za.pinterest.com/pin/560135272399496805/ 

Thank You – 2018

I started this blog on a whim last year two years ago, I think in April, because someone from school had started one of their own, and I had this little book of reviews that I had written everytime I finished a new book and I was so proud of it. A little book of silly, short reviews that I had written for some audience, even if I didn’t completely know who that audience was, and it was just sitting on my bookshelf, not reaching the people it was meant to. It was amazing and exhilarating and terrifying to share that with everyone. And then I started posting some of my crappy, cheesy, angsty teenage poetry because it was fun and I loved pretending I was this deep, insightful person.

And then a good friend walked out of my life, leaving all these broken pieces and bits that I didn’t know what to do with and I just wanted to write because it was the only way I could think properly and I put it up here without thinking it through, because I was so scared of what other people would think.

And then that post got fifteen or something views, and it felt like such a success because I’d finally broken the two-digit mark and I felt so fucking proud of myself. Then I wrote another poem and a review and a post where I laid everything bare…how lonely I was, how much I just wanted someone to call my own, and suddenly there were thirty-two views and it was the most I’d gotten since the day I started this little thing. And thirty isn’t all that many people; I had bigger classes than that when I was in primary school. But it was more and people responded to it and told me so many wonderful things and this was just my soul laid bare and people told me they understood and they told me thank you for writing this because this wasn’t something I could put into words before.

This morning I checked the blog’s stats for last year, because I wanted to see what I could improve on; a way of reflecting properly in the new year. And I started crying. I had obsessively checked the statistics of each post after I put it up – hoping that it would get over thirty views, and most of them did. It’s shallow, but the response to what I put up was almost as important to me as the piece itself. I never saw everything together though – the cumulative views and likes. Not until this morning.

In 2018, this blog grew much, much more than I realised. My total views at the end of 2017 was 130, and that jumped to 367 by yesterday. And that’s almost triple. I had 6 likes in 2017. And I was really, really proud of that because likes were special and only given out if someone thought your piece was spectacular.

I had 70 likes last year.

My writing wasn’t perfect. A lot of my longer posts had typos and spelling errors in them that I wished I could undo the minute I hit publish. My poems were cliché and angsty and most of them make me cringe when I think of them because I sound so pretentious when I read them. But they were things that I made. Things that I made that people read and connected with and that fact is filling me up with so much emotion that I think I’m going to burst.

So thank you, for every time you clicked on the links. For every single thing you wrote back to me, a comment or just a sweet DM. Thank you all so much.

Clichés

Why do people dislike clichés? And this is something I’m asking out of genuine curiosity, because I don’t. Dislike them, that is. (Are double negatives a cliché?)

For me, clichés are a way of approaching and understanding the world. Clichés are patterns, a fundamental part of any culture or family. A cliché is an overused phrase or element that most people believe betrays a lack of original thought, but I disagree. I just see a cliché as something that happens over and over again, and since I learn through repetition, it’s never a problem. My definition and understanding may be slightly skewed, so I’ll be using “clichés” and “tropes” interchangeably, where a trope is a reoccurring theme or motif in a work or genre.

Tropes are fundamental when a person is writing, because they essentially define a genre and your target audience. A fantasy story will have some sort of kingdom system, a horror story will have suspense and center around something dark and deadly. These tropes, these clichés, are the core of the genre and how we identify it. The tropes set the scene for the type of atmosphere an author is trying to create, and it would be incredibly difficult to create a story without them.

Clichés and tropes especially important to me because I am a self-defined “mood reader/viewer/consumer.” I consume specific stories and specific story elements at specific points in time because that is what I am in the mood for: the political upheaval and magic of a fantasy setting or the shouting and long speeches of hope from a shounen anime. What I read, or watch, depends entirely on what I know I need at that moment in time – I use books and stories to help me sort through specific problems that I’ve been thinking about for a long time. For example, if I’m feeling particularly stressed or scared, I’ll read a high-stakes action-fantasy with lots of death and despair to a) see how the characters in the story cope with their fear and how I can adapt that approach to my own thinking or b) remind myself that my life is never going to be as bad as theirs. If I’m feeling lonely, or out of place, I’ll watch anime that I know is going to be full of teamwork and the power of friendship and hope and all those other sickly-sweet tropes. Tropes and clichés are exactly why I approach specific stories in the first place, so it’s always been difficult for me to understand why people won’t read a story because the clichés are present.

Another reason why I think clichés and tropes are good in writing is because I’ve found that they make character development and world building so much easier. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it for as long as I can: characters are the most important thing to me in a story. The plot can be as stale as seven-day old bread, but I’ll still love the story if the characters are complex and relatable. If a writer uses tropes or clichés as a starting point, it means they have much more time to focus on the characters and the finer details of the world those characters find themselves in. Instead of spending ages on exposition and explaining the larger, more basic details of a story, authors have a “base model” of the world that they can directly work from. “This is a fantasy story. There are swords and magic and some evil guys and some good guys and the occasional badass swordsman with his shirt off in the training arena.” These specific parts of the story are understood by the reader before even opening the book, so the author can spend more time on creating diverse and interesting characters. Take a look at the Shades of Magic series by V. E. Schwab for example. The “base model” for the world is very simple – there are four alternate realities and there are specific people who can move through those realities. The reader assumes that these different realities have very little to do with each other and have very different cultures and people as a result. Instead of explaining why the worlds are so different and how they interact with one another, the author uses one or two pages to outline the basics of the world and then uses the rest of her “world-building budget” to create one of the most interesting and unique magic systems I have ever read about. And it works – because of the assumptions the reader made at the beginning – because basic aspects of the world were already understood. (It’s an excellent series by the way – I’d definitely recommend it.) Basically, the tropes provide the outline of the story, and the author colours in these tropes using small, fun details about the world and characters that we never would have considered ourselves.

Note that I think these tropes are merely a starting point. You can’t build a story out of tropes; otherwise computers would have been writing for far longer than anyone else. But there are very few people who actually do this. Most writers care about their work too much to just parrot back the stories that they have consumed themselves. Most stories are complex and three-dimensional, even if they don’t appeal to everyone.

We’re getting to the part of this discussion where I assume that I know what other people are thinking. This is my way of trying to understand the other side of the argument, so if there’s anything you disagree with in this next part, let me know, because I am completely open to someone correcting my way of thinking.

I think part of the dislike for clichés comes from the fact that people dislike specific clichés and then apply the whole “this one part is bad, so everything else must be bad too” way of thinking. Which is human. And something I can understand. I, for example, despise love triangles and Mary Sue-type characters (which, by the way, can also be male,) and because of this dislike, I tend to stay away from stories that I know include these tropes. I don’t actively read science fiction, because I dislike a large number of the specific tropes that make up a science fiction story. And this can be applied to certain music genres as well. I don’t know a lot about music, but I am aware enough to know that certain styles of music, pop or rock or country or electronica, will have notes or melodies or tunes that are specific to that style of music, and if you don’t like that note or melody or tune, you probably won’t enjoy that music genre in general. And of course, there are tropes that I like that most people don’t. I’m a sucker for any “power of friendship” story, but I understand why people don’t like it because it’s unrealistic or too sappy. It makes sense to dislike certain elements, and not everyone is going to love every single trope. But that doesn’t mean that tropes themselves are bad. I won’t read a specific story because I know what type of tropes it has, but I’ll never turn down a book because it has tropes at all.

Another reason why I think people may not enjoy clichés is because they don’t like the repetitiveness. They read to be surprised, to experience new things, to learn and discover. They’re people who read for the adventure of reading, rather than for making new friends like I do. It’s difficult to discover a new story if the plotline is one that you’re read dozens of times before. Since repetitiveness isn’t a problem for me, this isn’t a sentiment I can directly relate to, but it is one I can understand. Because it’s an opinion, and most opinions are completely valid, even if a person can’t find the exact words to explain why they feel a certain way.

And that’s the crux of the matter. I don’t think clichés and tropes are bad. But I don’t blame anyone who thinks they are. Entertainment is always made for specific groups of people, so once you find something that you love, you can explore more elements and forms in that area of interest, even if it strays away from what most people love. So let yourself enjoy the things that you enjoy and make sure that you surround yourself with people who let you do that, because life is too short to argue opinions all day long.

Featured image found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikalashka/8142771438/

Jump

I’m standing at the edge
A precipice
A balcony
Looking out over
A vast ocean

The ocean is
Glimmering, but dark
Blue and grey
Shifting endlessly
Drawing close
And then pulling away.

(like your eyes?)

The ocean is
Welcoming, but unforgiving
She opens her arms
To let me in
But does not so easily
Let go.

(like your arms?)

The ocean is
Tempting
A respite from the heat
A quiet place to rest
A chance to escape.

(like your heart?)

The ocean is
Calculating
Thinking
Filling holes before
They are formed
Answering questions before
They are asked.

(like your mind?)

i take a step
forward
and i am
weightless
a dream
a shadow
a breeze

i
am
falling

But I stop
A hand in mine
And a hand in theirs
A ladder
A tie
Keeping me afloat
Stopping the plummet.

My friends
A lucky cat
A red fox
A clever ferret
A silly peacock
A warm bear
A fierce badger
A soft mouse
A kind hummingbird.

They pull me
Up
Over
My feet on solid ground

They hold me there
And keep me from jumping
Again.

I cannot reach you.
Not yet.
And maybe, you’re not
Ready for me,

But I’ll wait,
With my cat and my fox and my ferret and my peacock and my bear and my badger and my mouse and my hummingbird,

We will wait,
Until our ties are
Strong enough to
Welcome you too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Featured image found at: http://jonathanrola.tumblr.com/post/43579639761

Connecting, communicating and the anxiety it brings.

So, I have This Friend. A really amazing and beautiful and strong friend whose laugh makes me smile every time I hear it because it’s like she’s got sunshine buried somewhere in her heart. The only thing is, she stresses. A lot. Some days it’s like Pandora opened her box (which was actually a jar, but whatever) and everything flew out and the only thing left in the box was the anxiety. Pop some red hair on the box and you’ve got This Friend. At first, I found it really strange, because I was so used to being the friend who always stressed the most; I was always the one being told to calm down, so it was quite jarring to be the one telling her to calm down.

Just the other day, she was having a party of some sort, a get together with all her friends, and she was, quite frankly, a mess. (She’s going to read this and in about a week I’m going to have to see her in class again and pretend I didn’t insult her in a blog post.) She was frazzled and all over the place, and just really, really afraid. Even though she didn’t really need to be. It’s not like there were going to be a bunch of unruly people coming, or people she didn’t know; she only invited about seven of us, so I couldn’t figure out just why she was stressing so much. Which was stupid of me. She has social anxiety so of course she’s going to stress about being in any crowd and I shouldn’t be judging her for that (I don’t.)

But it got me thinking, because stressing for no reason is something I do a lot, and I think I’ve finally figured out why.

I’m a first year in university, and I know with absolute certainty that whether I pass a test with fifty percent or ninety percent, the lecturer still isn’t going to care enough about me to remember my name. I know that it isn’t really necessary for me to get a distinction on every test, but it is still something I will stress about so much that I stand a serious chance of being ill. Which is silly. And illogical. And why I need a boyfriend soon so that I can get caught up in young love and neglect my responsibilities like a normal teenager.

I think the reason  for this is because knowledge is my way of connecting to the world. I love knowing useless facts and being able to randomly spit them out when a friend needs to smile or when there’s a silence that stretches on too long. I love seeing the little smile that people make, where they think the fact is really interesting, but it was also really random, so they don’t actually know what to say (the silences usually get longer after that and I hope that the ground will open up and swallow me whole.) I’ve always enjoyed teaching people, being able to explain something to them that I understand and find fascinating. It’s so much easier than talking about things like the weather or what we’re doing with our lives. Knowledge gives me structure, I know what to say and I know when to say it. I don’t get my words mixed up, and the chances are pretty low that I’ll say the wrong things and accidentally hurt one of the very few people that I enjoy spending time with. Someone once told me that I have a habit of talking to people instead of with them, and maybe this is because of that. Or that is because of this. Who actually understands anything when it comes to the tangle of wires that is a teenager’s personality.

The fact that random facts is the way I communicate isn’t what causes the stress, though. The problem comes in because I get into this habit and start thinking that it is the only way I can communicate. I get it into my head that I have to do well because that’s the only thing I can do. When my depression was at it’s worst last year, I didn’t act the way a teenager normally would. Most people put off doing their school work when they’re depressed. Their marks drop because they can’t find the motivation to pick up a pen and drill math equations for an hour. But for me, it was exactly the opposite. I threw myself into my schoolwork. The depression crept into my mind and whispered, “All you can do is study. You can’t play sport and you can’t speak to people and and you’re only pretending to be a writer and you’ll never be able to do anything except memorise the names of all the hominid fossils found at the Sterkfontein caves.” And it was scary, because I had had these kinds of thoughts before, everyone does, because human nature means living with insecurities, but the depression made me believe it in a way I never had before. It resonated, and I was so, so scared, because if I couldn’t do as well as I thought I needed to, I was going to be cut off from everyone around me. I’d never be able to have a decent conversation again, and people were going to realise that I wasn’t worth keeping around.

Some people did realise that. And they left.

But others stayed behind, and then even more came forward, and they taught me that even if I find talking or connecting with people to be more difficult for me than it should be, that’s okay. Even if I can talk for hours about why the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell, but if you tell me something deep and personal and cry on my shoulder, I will forget every single word in my vocabulary. They taught me that this part of me isn’t something that I need to change completely. Sure, maybe I should work on it so that I don’t come off as rude or arrogant, but it’s still a part of who I am and these people, these gorgeous, warm, amazing people who I don’t deserve to have in my life think it’s okay and they love me regardless. I’ve realised in the past few months that sometimes, when someone needs you, it’s not because they need some sort of advice from you or for you to say anything at all (I usually end up saying something really generic and cliche that makes me cringe for days afterwards), they just kind of need you to be there. A warm body that they can press into and hold. Someone who is solid and real and there.

So to all my friends, those that are new, and those that stayed behind. I love you to bits, and I will always, always be there standing right next to you, ready for a hug. (Seriously, I love hugs.) And you guys are so much more amazing than I ever thought you’d be. Thank you.

(Featured image can be found at: https://spiritualgangster.com/blogs/news/14798301-tumblr-tuesday)

I’m single…and I hate it

Look, I know what you’re probably thinking. Everyone says one of two things when I say that I’m lonely. Either “You’ll find someone” or “Being in a relationship has its downsides, too, like [insert random disadvantage that I already experience with my closest friends and have been able to manage anyway].”

But listen. I don’t just want a partner because I want to kiss someone. I don’t just want a partner because it’s cool or because I’m jealous of my friends. I want a partner so that, as Elizabeth Barret Browning wrote, I can “love [someone] for love’s sake.” I want to feel the butterflies in my stomach, I want to see someone’s face light up when they see me, just because they haven’t seen me for an hour. I want someone to laugh at me and tease me and rub my nose in all the stupid things I do because they are watching me always and can learn my mannerisms and finds them amazing just because they’re part of what makes me me. I want to get to know someone almost as well as I know myself, someone that I can learn something new about everyday, someone that can make me smile about things that aren’t actually funny.

There seems to be this idea that “Single people want to be in a relationship and the people in some sort of a relationship want to be single.” But the thing is, when I looks at my friends who are in relationships, I know they don’t, in anyway want to be single. Sure, there might be days when they feel overwhelmed, when they kind of just want to be left alone, we all have those days, but they don’t want to be single. They’re happy, in a way I can’t comprehend because it’s something I’ve never experienced before. They always smile when they tell me about the people they love. In fact, one of my friends got through her depression because of the relationship she has not right now. Not because she leaned to heavily or became dependent on her partner, but because the relationship gave her the confidence she needed to learn how to stand up again.

And the thing is, I’m not depressed, I know that. Depression and I are old friends and I know how to recognise it when it walks through my door, and I’m not really unhappy either. Maggie Stiefvater described it perfectly in her novel, The Raven Boys, where she called it a wanting for something bigger than yourself, someone better than you.

Another thing a lot of people say is that, “Being in a relationship is a big commitment.” And I just want to say, “Do you think I don’t realise that?” The commitment is part of why I want someone so badly. I need something to focus on that isn’t school or anime. I need (want) someone to tell me, “No books today and you’re not allowed to think about studying.” I need someone who will demand my attention, someone who is going to make me want to leave the house. I want someone that will pester me and just be there.

I know that a relationship isn’t easy. I do. I’m an introvert, but I’m not naive. I understand, even if not completely, what a relationship will take from me, and what I will need to put into that, but I also understand that I can’t keep all of me to myself any more, and I really want someone to lighten the load.

I also do understand that the reason why I haven’t met someone yet is probably because I can’t take that step forward. I don’t know how to talk with new people and express myself. I always have to wait for people to approach me first. I don’t go out or socialise very much, because that isn’t who I am. And I don’t really want to change that. Any advice?

 

 

 

 

(Featured image found at: http://crossingislandcool.tumblr.com/post/37678470654/nyarlotep)

Love, Simon (Simon vs the Homo sapiens Agenda) – Becky Albertalli

Rating: 94%

About:

Simon Spier is hopeless. Hopeless at school. Hopeless at parties. And hopelessly in love with a guy he’s never met. Which is a problem. Simon isn’t straight – not by a long shot – but no one knows except him and Blue. The emails Simon shares with Blue are his only refuge, until one of those emails falls into the wrong hands, and he is forced to make some decisions about his life a lot sooner than he expected.

“Straight people should have to come out too. The more awkward it is, the better.”

Review:

When I wrote this review the first time, it was 1:37 in the morning and I was mildly hysterical. Because the book was totally, irrevocably, mind-blowingly (I know that’s not a word) awesome. Logically, I knew I should have put the pen down so that I could get some sleep, but I seriously needed to gush. This book is so cute and tender and heartwarming. I love Simon (ha!) so much and this boy needs to be protected.

This book was really interesting for me to read because I’ve never considered the whole “coming out” to be this huge deal. I’ve always thought it was something you’d tell friends here and there, but casually; I never wanted expected to be this momentous occasion that needs everyone to be sitting down. Reading this book, though, I realised that it really could be a Big Thing™. Simon had to gather so much courage and confidence to be able to put a label on himself, to allow himself to be defined by certain stereotypes. This book showed me how much it can hurt if that choice, the choice to take that step, to find that courage, is taken away from you. The book showed me that we all grow and learn and take different steps at our own pace, and that’s okay. We don’t need labels, and if anyone says you do, they’re assholes.

Another thing that I found very interesting about the book is that the romance wasn’t painted as this perfect, wonderful thing, when it very easily and believably could have been. Simon recognised the fact that Blue was human, and may have been hesitant to do certain things, and he didn’t try to force him into anything. Simon didn’t put Blue on this impossibly high pedestal, and it makes me so happy because a relationship like that could only end one way. The relationship that developed between Simon and Blue was modern and young and new and real.

It was also incredibly easy to relate to each of the characters in the story. Normally, I can only really relate to one or two of the characters in a specific story at a time, but each of the characters in Love, Simon, were written in such a way that it was difficult not to find something of myself in them.

Simon was also a very self-aware main character. Not the fourth-wall breaking type, but a character that acknowledges his faults at some point throughout the story. He learns and adapts and fixes his mistakes. He embarrasses himself, he gets angry and he grows up. I have a friend who can’t understand why I like Young Adult fiction so much, and I think this story has helped me finally develop a proper answer for him. Young Adult literature presents real, relatable issues in a way that doesn’t make it about the issue. Simon’s life was a disaster, sure, but it was written to be a part of growing up – everyone goes through a stage where everything they do is wrong and cringe and just awful. It’s part of learning who you are and how you want to define yourself. YA has helped me do the same.

If you can’t tell yet, I loved this book, and I highly recommend reading it as soon as you can.

“…the curtains start to open. And I keep moving forward.” – Becky Albertali, Simon vs the Homo sapiens Agenda.

All for the Game series – Nora Sakavic

Rating: 97%

About:

Neil Josten has been fighting for his whole life and he’s been running away for half of it. But when the Palmetto Foxes show up at his latest hideout, he is faced with a choice: he can run for his life, or he can actually live it. In a team of misfits, from families overflowing with bad histories, his choice could prove to be harder to handle and deadlier than he ever expected it would be.

Review:

Okay, so, disclaimer. Normally, I wouldn’t really review an entire series, but I finished this trilogy so quickly that I can’t really discern what happens in each individual book, so I am going to review them all together.

My first impression of the books was that they are rough. Not necessarily in the sense that they are brutal or gruesome (although there are brutal and gruesome scenes aplenty,) but rough in the sense that they were “uncut.” The writing style was frantic, inexperienced, and it was fairly easy to pick up on the fact that the book was self-published and had never crossed the desk of an editor. At first, the poorer (note, I said “poorer,” not “poor”) quality threw me, but eventually I got so caught up in the story that it didn’t matter at all.

I have said it many times before, and I will say it for many more years to come. The best types of stories are the stories of healing. Stories where characters who have been broken seemingly beyond repair come together, and are able to build one another up again. The story of healing is a story of family, of joy, of compassion and love and all the best parts of life that are incredibly easy to lose sight of whenever we go through something rough.

All for the Game is a classic story about growing past your pain, finding your place and your passion. It’s a story about learning to accept your past, but not letting it control you.

The characters in the series have seen more than most. They are the people who have been thrown head first into the deep end of the pool that contains the absolute worst things humanity has to offer. It’s as if Life itself pulled their names out of a hat and decided, “You…you will be my personal punching bags.” But they stood up, they stood together, and they said, “F*ck you.” They kept laughing, they kept falling in love. They protected each other, and by the time the third book came to an end, they were an actual family. It was amazing to have been able to watch that relationship grow and develop in the way it did.

It would have been so easy for Sakavic to focus on the team dynamics and the relationships, and leave the character development in second place, but she didn’t. She somehow managed to write the characters in such a way that they were almost completely unrecognisable by the end of the series, and she balanced this seamlessly with the development of the character dynamics. Sakavic obviously has a natural talent for something that a lot of writers (myself included) spend years trying to master.

The plot itself was brilliantly paced. It was so dynamic and active that it was easy to fall right back into the story, even though I was reading it quite sporadically. The action and the moments climax were perfectly balanced with more relaxed and subtle moments of warmth and love.

Although there were no myths or magic, no dungeons or dragons, the series had all the fundamental elements of a fantasy. A lost hero coming home to reclaim his crown, a misunderstood assassin, the witty and wise old guy that probably practices some form of mystical art, and even the queen who finally gathers the courage to reject her king and take her land and kingdom into her own hands.

There isn’t much more I can say without being repetitive. All for the Game is one of those stories that stays with you. Even if you forget the character names, even if you can’t exactly recall the plot; the emotions and courage that you can take away from this story is something you will remember with the utmost clarity on the day your hands are old and wrinkled and your granddaughter asks you to tell her a story of princes and the monsters they had to slay. And besides, with lines like “It sounded like a dream, it tasted like damnation,” who wouldn’t want to give this story a chance?

“Family means something different with us because it has to. It’s not about blood. It’s not even about who we like. It’s about who [we’re] willing to protect.” – Nora Sakavic, The Foxhole Court

Waiting

She watches from the bedroom door
As he sits on their freshly-made wedding bed,
Dons his khakis
And polishes his rifle.
She watches as he says goodbye,
Turns around and walks out the door.
Headed to a land of red,
Flashes of white and cries of sorrow.
She watches until his back fades from view.
Then she sits at the dinner table,
Cross in hand,
And waits.

She looks on through a large window.
Pipes and tubes that look like tentacles,
His skin so white that he nearly fades into the walls.
She watches as his chest rises and falls,
Old lungs breathing far too slowly.
She watches as her sister rages across the pale floor,
Curses the clinical walls and empty rooms.
She sits down on the hospital chair,
Rosary clenched tightly,
And waits.

She peeks across the city from her balcony
A forest of glittering skyscrapers,
A sprinkle of green with a blue backdrop.
She watches as the birds fly past,
A pair of swallows, chipper, bright,
Looking for a place to nest and locked in a dance
That she had not yet learned to master.
She watches the people fall in love,
Find adventure, find a magic missing from her view,
Like the orange flashes of sunsets on the buildings.
She sits on the ledge,
Bible open next to her,
And waits.

Who said that waiting made a woman weak?
Why must a woman wear black,
And fight with knives or words to be strong?
Why must she be a bold colour:
A fiery red, a sad blue, a mysterious black?
Why can she not simply be a grey?
A background colour,
Not the main focus,
But without her,
No other colour would shine so brightly.

These women cling tightly to their faith,
Afraid their prayers will dry up
Before the time has come.
And yet,
They smile,
They nurture,
They love as passionately as they did before.

Truly, the woman who waits,
Is not weak at all.

Discussing loss and moving on

I know this isn’t something I generally write on here; I’ve limited myself to poems and reviews so far, but I’ve been craving an outlet, so this is what you’re getting. I’d also recommend reading the last few poems that I’ve posted, because this is kind of going to be an explanation for them and an expansion on what I was thinking about when I wrote them.

If you have read the poems, you’ll notice that they all seem to have an underlying theme that is sometimes very subtle, and sometimes very obvious. And if you looked deep enough to see that, you’ll know that, recently, I’ve lost someone. Or rather, they walked out of my life. With no explanation, no reason. They kind of just stormed out, banging open the door and refusing to shut it behind them again.

And it sucks.

And it sucks even more because it was something I was expecting, but I didn’t realise how much it would hurt. We were both at a stage in our lives when our paths were diverging, and it was inevitable that we would cut off contact. But the way it ended up happening was abrupt, brutal and knocked me off my feet and left me gasping for air.

There are days when I feel empowered, like I’ve been released from this weight that has been holding me down for years. The relationship had gotten to a point where it was exhausting, as if we were just putting on airs and pretending to be close. There are days where I really, truly don’t care, when I am happy to be rid of anyone who wouldn’t fight to keep me.

But there are other days when I feel desperately lonely. I feel guilty for that, because I have made new friends, started developing new relationships, but they are all in their infant stages – I treasure my new friends, trust and love them, but I don’t know if I can call them confidants just yet.

This person that walked out of my life, we were close, seriously so. We knew each other’s quirks and moods and how to handle them. We understood a joke as stupid and as simple as the word “Jack Russel” that would literally make us both laugh until our sides hurt so much that we could barely breath, then we’d look at each other and start laughing all over again. I don’t really know how to get past that.

I’m not afraid to look back at those days and smile; I’m not scared of the happy memories. But I am afraid of the morning when I’ll wake up and realise that I can never, ever relive those happy memories with that person.

They didn’t even give me the chance to tell them how much I treasured everything they’ve been for me these past few years. And I feel lost, because I feel like I am constantly catching glimpses of them. I’ll see something on a menu that reminds me of them and my entire day is ruined and I just kind of want to go to bed and sleep so that I’ stop thinking: what did I do wrong? Was it my fault? Could I have made it better if I just tried harder?

Even worse is this small voice in my head that keeps telling me, “You’re just making new friends and moving on because you have to, because you can’t be next to them any more.” And I feel so guilty because the people I have met are amazing and astonishing and pure and beautiful and they deserve every ounce of my friendship but I don’t know if I can really give it to them because I am so caught up in missing someone who didn’t want anything to do with me in the first place.

When this whole thing started, I didn’t realise how long it would take to move on. I woke up one morning, and I was happy, thinking that, “yes; this is who I want to be. I don’t need them.” I thought that would be the end of it. So why does my heart still hurt? Why can’t I get past this? Why are there still days when I’m quietly crying to myself when I have friends and other people who genuinely do care about me?

Where am I supposed to go without them?

How am I supposed to know who I am without them?