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Rewritten Dream

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 19:17:15 GMT

I am fifteen and I am at Sarah’s for dinner. I can tell they eat dinner at the same time every night because each member of the family has a different job that no one need tell them what or how to do. It’s 6:30pm. The microwave tells me it’s 6:30pm. But the middle lights aren’t blinking. So maybe it’s wrong. I don’t like this time to eat, I am still wound up from school, and I am not hungry at this point. I ate dinner with Sarah and her family anyway. The walls were yellow, and the plates were white. Her father was wearing a light blue button up shirt. The dining room was puking spring, even though it was not springtime. Sarah and I are going to a friend’s house, maybe to smoke pot. Sarah needs money for pot, so she tells her parents she needs money for gas. Sarah walks into the kitchen where her mother is doing the dishes to ask for money, I am sitting at the dining room table while they clean up around me, pushing at my leftover plate. I don’t know how to help yet. Her mother says no, “Ask your father.” I hear her say. I think briefly if those words have ever been spoken to me, and they haven’t. I have the urge to leave, but I don’t. Sarah gallops into the living room where her father is reading the newspaper, she walks by me with a pouty smile, and winks. She asks her “daddy” for gas money, she sounds like an infant, still unable to pronounce words. She strokes his arm, she sits in his lap, she is flirting with him. I adjust myself in my chair, afraid that what I am seeing is wrong. Sarah’s dad puts down his newspaper and reaches in his pocket; he pulls out $20 and hands it to his flirtatious daughter. I’m happy we have money for pot. He’s happy his innocent daughter has money for gas. I’m disgusted. I wipe my hands on napkin still sitting in my lap and I move myself from the table. I rustle the hair of Sarah’s little brother as I walk by him to leave. I hope that he is not as friendly with his father. I do not understand what I have just witnessed.

30 things

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 23:06:22 GMT

She does the dishes facing the window.

She lives in that backyard.

She lives in that moment
where everything is still, except her hands.

She stands with one leg bent forward, bracing herself against the cabinets beneath her knees.

She would fall faster than autumn without her habitual soak in the dinner’s water.

She wipes her hands on her orange napkins with purple morning glories, and sighs from the heat.

She shakes two sugar packets between her finger and her thumb, and throws them on the table swiftly, unused but ready.

Everything in her life is unused but ready.

She is anxious and alone with her coffee.

Her banana plaid skirt blends in with the wall, and she regrets her decision.

She is always found sitting between baby blue stripes.

She is April’s eye puzzle.

Eggshell is always her best bet, she thinks.

Her pearl earrings sag heavy in her lobes like full blue moons, and her jumper is exhausted.

She is so sad, and I am sad for her.

She makes a pile of crumbs on the table, bulldozing with her forefinger.

He hands are strong and wrinkled, she has dug them in the ground before.

She is lost in another window out of the dining room, praying to lie beneath one of the cars passing by, but she won’t.

Her husband is asleep behind his newspaper, or sleeping with his news.

She hasn’t touched a man really touched a man since Puerto Rico.

Her hands could use one more hot summer.

She brushes her overgrown bangs out of her face with the back of her palm, and rests it lightly under the bottom of her chin.

She walks up the stairs passed her family portraits.

She lives alone in this house.

I walk by her from the bathroom, and she winks with her left eye, while holding her skirt up from brushing the floor with h

identity.

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 01:10:56 GMT

I’m a 24 year-old average looking white girl with died blonde hair and hazel green eyes. My right arm has what some call a mini-sleeve on it, which is to say I have a semi-large tattoo. I have had most of this tattoo since I was 16, but I added to it a few years ago, making it much bigger than it was before. This is what makes me different, and I’m realizing that might be why I got it in the first place. When I was 16 no one had tattoos, because they were illegal for minors. My father, bless his deadbeat soul, signed for it without the permission of my mom. This caused a problem I need not discuss here. But when I was that age, having this tattoo set me apart from everyone. In some cases I got respect for it, it was strange. Now that I am 24, I know more people with tattoos than without. Now that I am 24 I am looked at as someone who should have my life figured out. Now that I am 24, this tattoo produces dirty looks from older people, and I see the judgment flowing out of their curly grey hairs. This is nothing. This is less than minor, but it is the only thing on my body that makes people look at me and think they have me figured out. I’ve never been a victim of racism, but I deal with judgment constantly because of this tattoo. If I wear a sweatshirt you can’t see it, when I take that sweatshirt off…it’s exposed, and in most cases people can’t help but talk about it. I have never once regretted this tattoo, it’s who I am, but it has most certainly made me more aware of societal behaviors and judgments. I look more apt to steal, or smoke cigarettes, or cause crimes, or use weapons, or lack intelligence, or lack motivation, and I’m constantly answering the question, “How will you get a job with that thing on your arm?”

sexual identity.

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:09:10 GMT

your hook has grown firmly in my mouth,
strings stretched tight like rope for walking.
you've curved your ribboned rainbow within a rusty wall,
and put painless pressure on the basement of my belly.

there exists no match for my adoration,
not one for fire or one for flame.
radiant in heat like hair toned red,
we are poetic in sleep.
sinking in the warmth of our weather,
creating shapes like full red roses in bound cotton feathers.

you've formed around my back now,
finger weaving thumb,
and you're kissing the walls of dream's soft skin.

my fevering love ship,
we may be too tattered and torn between your sheets,
but even if the future promised rest,
we would not sleep.

Bye Everyone

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:37:59 GMT

thanks for such an open and honest environment for us to share our personal creative work in, it was a great experience! and thank you to everyone for your feedback!