When I was five, I remember running across an open field on some warm summer day. We were flying kites, and I chased the one shaped like a bird, imagining I was flying right with it. The joy didn’t last long, though, because before I knew it my kindergarten shoe hooked over a rock and slammed my body against the concrete. Everything hurts more at that age, because the pain is fresh, you have no built up tolerance.

You had the tolerance, though. Just a few years older, you took great seriousness in your job as an older brother and ran over to where I sat, bawling with my leg bent against my chest.

“Hey,” you said, wispy blonde hair tangling itself in the wind. You crouched beside me and lifted up the legs of your pants to show me the crusting patches of scabs that littered your knees. “Look, I got these riding my skateboard last week. It’ll be okay.”

Not that it helped, because at the time I thought the scabs looked disgusting and there would be no way I could manage having those on my legs. But you lifted me up anyway, and walked me back to our parents for a bandaid.

Many years later, you storm up the stairs and away from the emotionally devastating conversation that occurred in the living room. Without hesitation, I follow you up, knowing you’d do the same for me in a heartbeat.

I knock lightly on the door that you just slammed, its sound reverberating down the hallway, past the empty spots where family pictures used to hang. There's no answer, but I enter anyway.

There are clothes and books and the dinner from last night scattered around your room, but I pay them no mind. They are not important. You sit with your back to the door, on your bed, your head buried in your hands. You make no sound, but your shoulders shake, each jagged movement equivalent to a piece of my heart falling away and into the darkest depths of my soul.

Slowly, I move to sit next to you. The mattress folds to our combined presence. In the quiet, I wrap my arms around your shoulders, and within seconds mine start to shake too, a stutter in the weight they carry in everyday life.

We ache, but we ache together.

Later, as I left your room, I thought back to that sunny childhood day, and was glad that at least now I could help lift you up, too.

When I look at mirrors, they don't break, but they bend and warp and fold in on themselves.

I'll forget

(the exact words,

too many to remember)

(I wish I wouldn't,

I want to have you with me

always)

what you said.

I'll forget

(if we shared lunch

or went downtown

or looked at those mushroom overalls,

did I just know you would love them,

or did you tell me?)

(will I ever be able

to tell people

about the days

I know we spent together,

but can't remember)

what we did.

But I'll never forget

(reluctance)

(stubborn)

(sad,

not like I'm used to,

I can't tell you

the way the tears are always there

the way my heart is never as light as it was)

(helpless,

I'm not good at helpless,

but I'm not a doctor,

not a scientist,

can't drive you there,

can't pay for it,

I can just try to make you smile one more time)

(happiness,

it comes in bursts,

bubbles coated in sad,

but sometimes I forget

and it's just you me and

snow or dirt or leaves or movies or walking or eating)

(I better

never forget)

the way you made me feel

(you made me feel)

“Greetings, loyal subjects...I understand there is some grumbling amongst you regarding the state of your lives.” The king addressed the large crowd that had gathered in front of his royal palace. Up until that point, His Majesty had been having a rather good morning. He’d woken from a light slumber to his first breakfast, upon which being concluded, had had a walk around the Royal Garden and had returned for his second breakfast. As soon as the dessert was taken away, he was carried up the stairs to have his mid-morning nap. And then he woke to this.

“Questions about why I spend all your taxes on wars and very little on your cities,” the king continued, unaware that his peruke was slightly askew. “How I have one standard of justice for street level drug dealers and another for pharmaceutical drug dealers. And how I take cash and gifts from large donors, many of whom then get favorable treatment...rest assured, these are all valid concerns.”

The crowd was visibly surprised. They’d expected the king to deny everything, and they were ready for a fight against the Imperial Army. After all, with the king’s recent history, violence was almost assured. Several of them had even brought pitchforks to be used if necessary. They hadn’t expected the king to be so reasonable.

“But let me draw your attention to my humble food taster. Seven times a day, he puts his life on the line by tasting my meals. Seven times a day, he must risk his life for a person he doesn’t even know. Why? Because he is a servant of the law. I am just like my food taster. I might have a higher rank, a longer title, but I too am a servant of the law.” At this point, the king leaned back into his bedroom as he caught a whiff of tender barbecued wings – first lunch. His stomach growled in annoyance, telling him to wrap this up quickly.

Now the crowd shifted uncomfortably. They shoved their hands in their pockets and quickly moved their eyes. Several of them even brought their pitchforks and blazing brooms to eye level, thereby surrendering all firearms. They’d arrived with such bottled up anger, but now they didn’t want to spew it at the king. He seemed like a nice guy, just an ordinary person like most of them.

“Some of you may ask who, then, is my master. It is not the law. It is the people who make the law. The people who think they’re above the law. The people who claim to help the people, but do nothing. You may have come to me with bad intentions. Several of you may have wished to cause harm to me. Do not waste those feelings; instead, show them to the Members of Parliament!”

That last proclamation made an impact on the crowd. They were reawakened with the spark of hatred. Now their anger wasn’t directed towards the king; now their fury was facing the Members of Proclamation. They gave one last cheer, raised their pitchforks, and surged towards the Parliament.

“Distraction is the key to governance,” the king whispered, walking towards his dining room for his first lunch. After all, mental effort made him hungry.

A day as grey as

the clouds above it

And the hills, which have changed from green to orange to purple to a deepest blue in the fading light

with a few bursts of yellow from the beech trees, holding on in their marcescence

Sadness is a blight 

to which there is no cure

but time.

Indeed, it can be eased like swallowing pills for a chronic pain

but it doesn't ever seem to leave.

Walking through barren woods, which is barren of its leaves but not its memories, nor its life, though that one is harder to find

Running with my hair down, feeling it flow with the air through which it winds, feels as if it

takes

a little pain away

And raindrops begin to fall

a few 

and more

then many,

recycling tears which have run dry.

Sadness comes as sadness goes, never gone, not always there

but just around the corner

morbid, maybe, a depressive take on life

but true, is it not?

Maybe it is not such a bad thing

because I do my best writing when I am sad.

Trees blow in the wind

and the words flow

as I am washed clean by the rain.

Charcoal

is our preferred method

with which to sketch our days

thick, dark swaths of pigment

that smear and make their mark 

unapologetically

abstract, flowing, influential

or gashes across the page

like wounds that won't close

and neither are ugly

though we can't erase them

they are the foundations of your life

but details make the picture

the careful lines and smudges

noticing a twinkling eye

or smiling with all your teeth 

and everyone you meet

is drawing their own

conclusions and beginnings

unfinished works

marbled with messy, rushed greetings

and slow, agonizing goodbyes

strapped to our backs and worn on our sleeves are these masterpieces

everyday being dotted

with someone else's charcoal

our sketches are never finished

but always beautiful

but we forget, somehow:

we are all art. 

The wind brushed across her cheeks, tender. It fluttered her hair and made it stand upright, soft, as the sun caressed its fingers across her arm, both warm and compassionate.

The day felt hazy, perhaps magnified by the way her head lolled to the side in the field of green. Her vision was clear but her mind’s eye was half shut, only accepting sensory details like the tickle of the grass and the nipping of the breeze at her nose. 

She could hear voices behind where she lay, faint, calling her name. Her brothers, she was sure, who were much older but weren’t sick of home in the way she was. She liked to pretend, when she laid with her body pressed against the ground, that she was somewhere without palm trees and coastal weather and instead someplace out of her dreams, where trees turned orange in fall and it snowed and you didn’t have to drive 300 miles north to get deep into a forest. Played pretend that she was somewhere she didn’t feel trapped in some concrete jungle of metal skyscrapers and electronic billboards.

Something in the back of her mind nagged her, told her she was being unrealistic with her dreams. That she would miss the citrus trees hanging over the neighbor’s fences and the summer road trips to Death Valley. That she would miss smelling the sea salt from her bedroom window late at night, hearing the chittering of raccoons and the zip of ruby-throated hummingbirds in the summer. That she would regret all the choices she was considering making.

Enough. She breathed in deep, and let it out slowly until her lungs ached for air. And repeated, until her racing anxiety of the future quieted and it all fell away under the lull of the California sun.

The grass in her grandparents’ backyard was the one place where her visions were fueled, atop a hill where at a certain angle all she could see was the sky and the clouds that filled it. She greatly treasured the few weekends during the summer when she could be there for hours, alone, almost in a sort of trance. There it was easy to forget everything else existed, and she didn’t want to leave just yet.

“Mariana!” One of her brothers had wandered closer, sounding rather irked. “Come help set up for lunch, would you?”

She sighed, taking another calming breath before pushing herself up from her sanctuary, dirt finding its way beneath her nails and grass clinging to her shirt. The future hadn’t arrived yet, she had to remind herself. For now, she guessed she could wait a while longer.