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Literature Text
He wrote each feeling on the insides of his arms, sinking it into his blood stream. Most days, it would be a list trailing down his arm, each one crossed out with red pen, leading onto the next. On his first day of school the list looked like this.
Nervous
Heavy boots
Longing
Hopeful
Content
Hunger
Wanderlust
Fear
Boredom.
He liked the way the ink letters would bleed into each other and eventually become illegible, and by that point that's usually how he felt. The red would seep and emphasise the tangle, and it would take a little-too-hot shower to wash it off.
[the stain was still inside him though, and the shower didn't even begin to remove that].
Some days, the list would be just one feeling written over and over again., thicker and thicker as the feelings deepened and darkened. Like the day that he just called 'the worst day'. There was only one feeling on his arm, and it was written so many times in the same place that he couldn't tell where the broken skin and the red ink separated. Numb.
Not all the words were feelings, sometimes they were reminders. If he had a test in class, he would write breathe on his wrist, as he knew he might just pass out, or be so busy concentrating on the paper his lungs might accidently forget. Some days he wrote it there to just remind himself that he should keep breathing and not step in front of the trains that sped by his house every half hour.
He had a shadow that followed him around. It was like a curse that was lurking around each corner, waiting to snatch or swallow him. He learned to stay away from ropes and cliffs, he was the last one, and his arm said: survive.
The feeling of this gave him heavy boots, as he felt the expectations and ideals placed on his not nearly broad enough shoulders. He knew that there was something inside him that was going to break one day, and it scared him. But he was determined that the curse he could see tiptoeing behind him in the corner of his eye would stop with him.
It rained on the worst day, it filled everyone's hearts, and the gutters were so full that it spilled onto the streets leaving peoples shoes soggy as it soaked into their socks. He remembered the way it hit his window with such force it would have washed away any kind of pain, and in the short walk from the apartment to the corner store his heart was filled to the brim, and his soles released the water like a flood gate, leaving his boots light. He'd forgotten what light boots felt like, and it made him smile for a little while. Relief.
His head started to tick over, and he had inventions come to him. What if the city had a tear reservoir? Holes in peoples pillows that all lead underground, and could be measured by someone with overalls and reported on the morning news? We would all know how the city was feeling. Curiosity.
It made him smile until the day became dark, and his boots became heavier than they had ever been before.
It was the most sudden thing he had ever witnessed. The weight was blanketed across the entire town and everyone's boots became heavy. Maybe that's why no-one really moved, not fully, anyway. Everyone was just standing in the same place, tilting their heads up, to see the clouds billow and waft out of a tall office building. Two of them actually. He craned his neck too, and saw the smoke blend with the clouds and leave the sky darkened and menacing. The sounds exploded secondly, sirens and screams and general chaos filled the air and joined the smoke. Hollow.
He saw silhouettes, shadows falling and landing. He didn't want to think about them too hard, but he knew they were bodies, and they were still alive, even if it was only just. Some dropped like pins straight and silent; others struggled, tortured and vocal. All fell to the ground. It made his boots and his heart and his whole being heavy. There are some images that you don't forget, they remain burned into the backs of your eyelids forever and you relive the horror each time you close your eyes. Changed.
There were people sobbing into phones, and collapsing into arms of strangers to cope with the heaviness. It was far too much for one person to carry on their own, so people were leaning on others so as not to break under the weight and the thickness and drown in the tears. He could still recall the numbers as they ticked over and up as the day wore on. 10… 200… 500... 1000… 1300… 1700… 2000… 2500. Each number was etched into his mind, and he would never forget the weight the final number dumped upon him. It took a few weeks for all the missing bits to be counted into people… 6000 .it was more than he could comprehend and that night he thought about the tear reservoir and knew that it would be overflowing, and then there would be two disasters and the day would be even worse. No-one needed that. Thoughtful.
The city tried to sleep, and the next day everyone's boots were still just as heavy. People were walking around, and they were wandering places to meet people who they couldn't comprehend weren't there anymore. They sky was still clouded with fires that continued to burn for long after the worst day. But no-one was looking up anymore; all were looking at the ground, their shoes. He thinks this was because there was a gap in the skyline, and it looked sore; sore like a mouth that was missing teeth. The rain that swept the town was simply everyone wishing to wash their feelings away any way they could: down drains, onto muddy ground, spat into lakes and absorbed back into the sky, when it cleared after what seemed like days. His arms were washed clean as well, and the feelings fell to his feet and pooled in his shoes. He walked through the puddles of everyone's emotions that were scattered around the streets, mixing in with the rain that left everything grey and nothing was the same as it had once been.
He didn't write on his arms anymore, he had already felt far too much in just that one day. Instead he invented a chemical that could be intertwined with clothing, and the rain would mix with the tears and shirts would change colour depending on how heavy your boots or heart were. Everyone would know if your shirt was blue then your heart was drowning and you could use a cup of hot tea and a chat; or a red shirt would mean you are angry, or feeling so annoyed at something or someone, and you need a bit of room to cool down and return to your normal fleshy state.
The streets eventually refilled, people stopped walking to no-where, and the shadows of people who weren't there anymore evaporated with the rain. The reservoir was less full each day, until it was back to its average height of teenage broken hearts, and people who's cats had died. His boots became less heavy, and he looked at the skyline again, because he couldn't look down any longer, and eventually the gaps became commonplace. This did not mean they weren't still there, and that it didn't still sting when his mind wandered and he remembered that something was missing; he simply had to try to forget and not let his boots fill up anymore.
They put flowers around the outside of the rubble on the tall wire fences, and he noticed that they made a memorial of all the shadows that were no longer there, the people who had been inside when they both collapsed. The worst day would be remembered, because it felt rude to try and erase it completely, and they needed to remember the people who had dropped from the heights, the people who had been lost in the fires and those who were buried without names or faces. He saw they had lit the sky each night with two beams that filled the empty space, and made him feel a little lighter for seeing something where he had gotten so used to seeing nothing.
Heavy boots
Longing
Hopeful
Content
Hunger
Wanderlust
Fear
Boredom.
He liked the way the ink letters would bleed into each other and eventually become illegible, and by that point that's usually how he felt. The red would seep and emphasise the tangle, and it would take a little-too-hot shower to wash it off.
[the stain was still inside him though, and the shower didn't even begin to remove that].
Some days, the list would be just one feeling written over and over again., thicker and thicker as the feelings deepened and darkened. Like the day that he just called 'the worst day'. There was only one feeling on his arm, and it was written so many times in the same place that he couldn't tell where the broken skin and the red ink separated. Numb.
Not all the words were feelings, sometimes they were reminders. If he had a test in class, he would write breathe on his wrist, as he knew he might just pass out, or be so busy concentrating on the paper his lungs might accidently forget. Some days he wrote it there to just remind himself that he should keep breathing and not step in front of the trains that sped by his house every half hour.
He had a shadow that followed him around. It was like a curse that was lurking around each corner, waiting to snatch or swallow him. He learned to stay away from ropes and cliffs, he was the last one, and his arm said: survive.
The feeling of this gave him heavy boots, as he felt the expectations and ideals placed on his not nearly broad enough shoulders. He knew that there was something inside him that was going to break one day, and it scared him. But he was determined that the curse he could see tiptoeing behind him in the corner of his eye would stop with him.
It rained on the worst day, it filled everyone's hearts, and the gutters were so full that it spilled onto the streets leaving peoples shoes soggy as it soaked into their socks. He remembered the way it hit his window with such force it would have washed away any kind of pain, and in the short walk from the apartment to the corner store his heart was filled to the brim, and his soles released the water like a flood gate, leaving his boots light. He'd forgotten what light boots felt like, and it made him smile for a little while. Relief.
His head started to tick over, and he had inventions come to him. What if the city had a tear reservoir? Holes in peoples pillows that all lead underground, and could be measured by someone with overalls and reported on the morning news? We would all know how the city was feeling. Curiosity.
It made him smile until the day became dark, and his boots became heavier than they had ever been before.
It was the most sudden thing he had ever witnessed. The weight was blanketed across the entire town and everyone's boots became heavy. Maybe that's why no-one really moved, not fully, anyway. Everyone was just standing in the same place, tilting their heads up, to see the clouds billow and waft out of a tall office building. Two of them actually. He craned his neck too, and saw the smoke blend with the clouds and leave the sky darkened and menacing. The sounds exploded secondly, sirens and screams and general chaos filled the air and joined the smoke. Hollow.
He saw silhouettes, shadows falling and landing. He didn't want to think about them too hard, but he knew they were bodies, and they were still alive, even if it was only just. Some dropped like pins straight and silent; others struggled, tortured and vocal. All fell to the ground. It made his boots and his heart and his whole being heavy. There are some images that you don't forget, they remain burned into the backs of your eyelids forever and you relive the horror each time you close your eyes. Changed.
There were people sobbing into phones, and collapsing into arms of strangers to cope with the heaviness. It was far too much for one person to carry on their own, so people were leaning on others so as not to break under the weight and the thickness and drown in the tears. He could still recall the numbers as they ticked over and up as the day wore on. 10… 200… 500... 1000… 1300… 1700… 2000… 2500. Each number was etched into his mind, and he would never forget the weight the final number dumped upon him. It took a few weeks for all the missing bits to be counted into people… 6000 .it was more than he could comprehend and that night he thought about the tear reservoir and knew that it would be overflowing, and then there would be two disasters and the day would be even worse. No-one needed that. Thoughtful.
The city tried to sleep, and the next day everyone's boots were still just as heavy. People were walking around, and they were wandering places to meet people who they couldn't comprehend weren't there anymore. They sky was still clouded with fires that continued to burn for long after the worst day. But no-one was looking up anymore; all were looking at the ground, their shoes. He thinks this was because there was a gap in the skyline, and it looked sore; sore like a mouth that was missing teeth. The rain that swept the town was simply everyone wishing to wash their feelings away any way they could: down drains, onto muddy ground, spat into lakes and absorbed back into the sky, when it cleared after what seemed like days. His arms were washed clean as well, and the feelings fell to his feet and pooled in his shoes. He walked through the puddles of everyone's emotions that were scattered around the streets, mixing in with the rain that left everything grey and nothing was the same as it had once been.
He didn't write on his arms anymore, he had already felt far too much in just that one day. Instead he invented a chemical that could be intertwined with clothing, and the rain would mix with the tears and shirts would change colour depending on how heavy your boots or heart were. Everyone would know if your shirt was blue then your heart was drowning and you could use a cup of hot tea and a chat; or a red shirt would mean you are angry, or feeling so annoyed at something or someone, and you need a bit of room to cool down and return to your normal fleshy state.
The streets eventually refilled, people stopped walking to no-where, and the shadows of people who weren't there anymore evaporated with the rain. The reservoir was less full each day, until it was back to its average height of teenage broken hearts, and people who's cats had died. His boots became less heavy, and he looked at the skyline again, because he couldn't look down any longer, and eventually the gaps became commonplace. This did not mean they weren't still there, and that it didn't still sting when his mind wandered and he remembered that something was missing; he simply had to try to forget and not let his boots fill up anymore.
They put flowers around the outside of the rubble on the tall wire fences, and he noticed that they made a memorial of all the shadows that were no longer there, the people who had been inside when they both collapsed. The worst day would be remembered, because it felt rude to try and erase it completely, and they needed to remember the people who had dropped from the heights, the people who had been lost in the fires and those who were buried without names or faces. He saw they had lit the sky each night with two beams that filled the empty space, and made him feel a little lighter for seeing something where he had gotten so used to seeing nothing.
Literature
Asphodel
A beckoning:
watercolour sky shrinking,
too late, teeth fall; pearls
from a broken string.
Blink and the moon ignites—
but the sheets are still
envelope-stiff.
Literature
troubles will be gone -
whispers the girl to the boy as she kneels by his bed:
-----i know how it feels to be scared in the night;
-----to dance half a step slower, still waiting for the partner who left long ago;
-----to stand alone, still searching for the voice who moved far away.
oh, she murmurs, as they stare at the ceiling:
-----i know the ache in turning the last page;
-----i know the disappointment hidden in the repetition of tomorrows,
----------when everything changed but nothing's new.
look, says the girl, as she points to the stars:
-----i know how it feels to pull a teddybear out of storage in the middle of the night,
----------just for so
Literature
equinox
summer is
strawberry-flavoured
emancipation,
a subtle shift in the light.
drifting, you
start to miss the ivy
that crawled over your eyes
and shielded them from shadows.
as for myself,
I think I’ve fallen in love
with the idea of it,
soporific, spindling, sublime:
all the s's in your name
straightening their spines
in sequence.
can you hear the sudden hush
of a shifting season?
listen: shake the snow from your hair
and breathe.
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all done.
© 2012 - 2024 ohsparrowsong
Comments13
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I wanted to write a big comment about how good this is, but I'll just say: this is one of the best pieces of writing I've seen. Amazing work.