Who knows what miraculous thing
has been hiding away all winter.
What grows quietly beneath the surface,
just waiting.
Maybe, when the sun starts to come out,
something grand will unfurl its petals
and turn its face toward the sky.
Maybe it will be more beautiful
than you ever imagined
as it dances slowly in the wind.
Maybe you will wonder
how something such as that
could ever be contained,
as it bursts forth from its hiding place.
Maybe it will be a miracle,
something graceful
and confident,
and beautiful.
But for now,
all you can do is wait.

There is something hidden away inside me,
something strong and confident,
some tiny seed, just biding its time.
Something much deeper than all the doubt,
and the fear,
and the silence.
Something more than the worries,
and the loops my mind gets caught in.
I know its there,
I can feel it sometimes,
sturdy and steadfast.
And I can almost touch it,
almost get there,
but it remains just out of reach,
hidden in the fog
or lying on the other side of a veil.
I tell myself that if I can just keep going,
get through this one thing,
climb this last hill,
follow this one bend in the path,
that I will get there,
but I never quite do.
I keep going though,
sure that if I can just turn this next corner,
that I will finally have it.

A grid of pixilated faces sit in front of me,
listening as I read out of a book.
I try my best to talk,
but they can't hear what I say
until I am actually done talking. 
We are moving at different speeds.
They can't hear me, 
I can't talk,
this isn't working,
none of this is working. 
The voices are static and choppy,
the don't sound at all like they should,
they don't sound real.
We are all in our own worlds,
millions of miles apart,
it seems,
though I could see people,
just by walking down the road.
But thats not allowed,
and I am stuck here,
and that little bit of connection
is all there is left.

I sit under a tree
as the little snowflakes start to fall.
The first ones in weeks,
and I had really been enjoying spring.
My pants are wet and cold,
my shoes and socks are waterlogged
from slipping into the icy river.
But I smile,
and I start to laugh,
despite everything.
Just when things are going as bad
as they can possibly go,
you look at it again
and realize how ridiculous it all is.
The world is immeasurably funny,
and laughter spews forth,
rushing and tumbling on top of itself,
flowing quickly and plentifully,
from your once closed
and sorrowful mouth.

 

Sometimes there are mountains of it,
valleys and fields and rivers of despair. 
And when you think of every face,
you have not seen
but for the pixilated images on a computer screen
and every hallway or classroom
that lies empty
and the concrete getting lonely
on all the abandoned streets,
there are oceans of despair.
Each with its own tide,
rising and swelling
and threatening to drown the world,
and you can't possibly imagine
what happens next.

But other times,
when you realize that the robins,
have still come back for spring,
and the crocuses are still blooming
and the sky is still as blue as ever,
despair can be reduced
to a single small pebble.
And it is your obligation
to carry that pebble for a while,
everyone must at some point or another.
But soon that pebble will grow warm,
and smooth in the palm of your hand.

I try my best to write,
get some words down on a page.
I know I should,
but the words are not behaving.
Every time I try to grasp them, 
they slip through my fingers like water.
I can't get more than a few lines.
Why won't the words just do what I want?
I try again and again to get something,
clawing, grabbing at the air,
but I come up empty-handed.
The few sentences that I do manage to write
are stale, nothing but a bland
explaining of the facts or physical features.
As soon as I try to add any emotion,
I get stuck.
The words write themselves quickly
and plentifully in my mind,
turning around and around,
but they stay there are won't come out.
Any time I try to get to what I actually think,
what I actually feel,
it's like there is a blockage put up,
a heavy metal door slammed in my face,
and everything just disappears,

The moon shone in on my face this morning. 
A small bright orb in the sky,
and I squinted at it as I lay on my side,
drifting in and out of consciousness.
It would be nice to be up there right now,
I thought, and shifted my position.

I could sit and watch the earth rise
over the rocky grey craters
against the void of dark sky,
speckled with stars millions of light-years away.
You can't see people from up there.
All you see is a small marble,
washed with blue and white.
Our day to day troubles ​are not quite
as big as we make them out to be.

And it would be silent up there too.
A break from the loud blaring noises
that accompany us everywhere we go.
Ads, news reports, people everywhere
screaming in our faces,
their voices of wild fear and greed.
Buy this, listen to me,
this is what you should do,
you should be afraid, 

I thought that I was starting to get somewhere.
Things were finally coming together. 
I was still sad sometimes, but not nearly as often.
We practiced the play down in the basement.
The lights were off and people were laughing.
I laughed even harder watching the dances at lunch.
Something good was starting to happen,
spring was coming at last.

But then, on a Wednesday,
we were warned we might not be coming back to school the next day.
We told jokes and tried to facetime each other.
But we were worried.
What are the chances?
I asked that afternoon.
I don't know, I honestly have no idea, I was told.
As we were leaving school,
everyone stood together, hugging each other.
People said goodbye, and I love you.
We still joked, to make light of the situation.
We did not come to school the next day.

Now everything that I had is locked inside a dark box.