Bad Behavior
As I peruse posts regarding gender relations. I have noticed a reoccurring theme, and that theme is bad behavior. Regardless of whether you are male or female, if you are putting up with bad behavior, according to the wisdom of the internet, you are a moron who has no self-respect.
You want to talk about love, get out of here with that nonsense! The important thing in a relationship is how you personally benefit from it and if you are pouring in emotional labor with no payoff, you are being horribly abused. Don't expect anyone to feel sorry for you though, you're the one who is putting up with it.
In an age where we have moved past merely surviving, it's about quality of life and if your partner is emotionally abusing you, that's no life! The internet teaches us that people will do the absolute bare minimum to get what they want and if you let them get away with that, you deserve the hell you have put yourself through. All the red flags where there, you just chose to ignore them because you're projecting your fantasy on someone who only wants to take advantage of you.
In a world where the media sells us fantasies, you need to stop believing the lie that people care about you. You need to stop believing the lie that your "person" is out there waiting for you to find them. The only thing your "person" is interested in is sucking the life out of you and consuming all your resources.
Wow, that went downhill fast. Anyway, maybe you are not reading the same stuff I am but if you are, you are probably looking for a bridge to jump off of. Hopefully there are none close by. Through all the disillusionment there is some truth to be found, but the road to get there is as depressing as hell.
Dei Verbum
A peculiar monstrosity: it floated so gracefully to the ground, implying an otherworldly sophistication that went beyond mere arrival. Yet, it was obvious that Earth was its destination and Earth's people assumed to be the reason.
Its shape was one that could only be conceptualized by anatomy so alien that no one could pretend to guess function from form.
That was 43 years ago.
It sat, inert and impenetrable, occupying most of Piazza San Pietro in Vatican City. It had alighted perfectly equidistant from all of the Doric columns of the colonnade. In fact, the Egyptian obelisk was no more, as if the craft had absorbed it on descent.
It's landing spot was subject to heated debates. Politicians, think tanks, and the clergy of all religions weighed in. Yet, imagining an alien sentience that appreciated the significance of religion seemed a stretch.
There were noises emanating from within the craft. Metallic noises, arrhythmic, and seemingly random. Sometimes they beat out imagined patterns, but the best AI could not come up with a plausible analysis regarding the possibility of communication.
The Vatican Observatory Jesuits, by decreed edict of the sovereign city-state, were the first to officially evaluate the strange spacecraft. After four years they gave up, the ship's hull being completely impervious to any type of man-made breach.
Invitations in all the world's languages, on all bandwidths, went unanswered. Stroboscopic lights invited replies to mathematical sequences, but the visitors remained deaf, blind, and mute.
Four years after the Jesuits had given up, the inquiry team from CERN returned to Meyrin, Switzerland, with no information.
Then the noises stopped.
Perhaps whatever machinery was at work had finished priming itself and the craft would finally open.
But the silence continued long past the visiting team from Pasadena returning to their Jet Propulsion Laboratory—no wiser to the craft's details other than what could be seen with the naked eye or measured with calipers.
The Pope himself, in his weekly addresses from his apartment balcony, always closed with the following:
"We've been patient and faithful for two millennia now for the Second Coming. Certainly we can muster patience to out-wait our visitors."
The people were haunted: What if neither ever happens?
At first, the societal upheavals were tumultuous. evoking the many theories. Why had the aliens landed so ostentatiously in a place synonymous with Christianity? Was it a scout ship for a planned invasion? Was it a calling card, an introduction for more to come? Was it sent by God? Were the unseen visitors dimensionally aphasic and we simply missed each other due to some myopic existential blindness?
Why no doors or windows—not even a seam in the unknown metal? We knew the craft was not solid; we all heard the noises for a few years before they abruptly stopped.
Why the hell hadn't they come out? Why the hell wouldn't they? They came all this way (a long way, indeed), only to hide themselves from us. Was it some test that only made sense according to some alien cognitive sensibility?
We waited.
Could they have been waiting on us? For some societal milestone? For some evolutionary rite of passage that finally would deem us worthy?
We wanted to meet them. Learn from them. We wanted a cure for death, solutions to climate change, perpetual motion machines, and free, limitless energy. Certainly they knew! We needed them.
Yet, they chose to remain unavailable.
Some mysteries were not worth the effort.
So the people of Earth moved on.
While at first there were promises of a new age of understanding and brotherhood among Earth's peoples and nations, after a decade and realizing once again we were on our own, the old grudges, feuds, and holy wars re-surfaced.
But also, total human knowledge continued to double faster than an in-winding Fibonacci curve.
It, one day, came to be: we were finally able to open the craft.
With much holographic media coverage and fanfare, seams were rendered where there were none before. That's when we discovered that the door header wasn't level: the jamb's slope could be freed from the outside, but from the inside would have been impossible.
The smell was awful.
What was left of them were smudged, gelatinized stains on the craft's floors. Many alien contraptions lay about evidencing the occupants' efforts to clear the doorjamb, open their portal, and exit their craft to meet their new friends.
Repetitio est mater studiorum
Repetitio est mater studiorum
October 23, 2024
The women in my family range from intelligent to genius. The men, mainly my father, occupy the other end of the spectrum. My grandmother taught electrical engineering. My mother, with dual masters in computer science and mathematics, worked as a contractor for a variety of governmental projects. I have my doctorate in physics and am an inventor of sorts.
My father drinks beer and spits vitriol every chance he gets.
Why the minds of the former met the hatred of the latter has always been a mystery to me. I never had the opportunity to speak to my mother. She died giving birth to me. I have her journals and her notes, but nothing not related to her work. My father has never once told me a story of her or how they met. I do not know the details of their relationship. Was she blind? Did he change for the worse? My grandmother wants to divulge details, but something holds her back. She spends our time together preparing me for some grandiose adventure in science that will soon arrive. She knows something.
My father knows nothing.
He does what he needs to do to get by. I do not believe he graduated high school. I know he must have repeated a few grades trying. This made him too old and too large to be with children. He was, and still is, a bully. He is physically intimidating. He is strong enough to impose his will. He is weak enough to recognize his faults and correct them.
My father is corrosive and wishes to remain that way.
And yet, I live with him. My grandmother lives with him. He never married my mother and she still lived with him. The question that remains is “Why?”
There is no answer.
So I searched for one. I became engrossed with my mother’s journals. She wrote of the abstract and then explained with the concrete. She meandered in a myriad of volumes all culminating in one central, never discretely mentioned, thesis.
She wrote of time travel.
Once I garnered this singular fact, my grandmother unleashed a torrent of information upon my person. She spoke of my mother as never before. She took me to the safe deposit box at a bank I never knew existed. She gave me access to my mother through what she invented, what she postulated, and what she theorized.
In essence, my grandmother gave me nearly 40 years of my mother’s life.
And then, without warning, my grandmother took too many sleeping pills the next night.
She never woke up. She never wanted to wake up. The smile on her face told me she finally fulfilled a promise, unloading a burden, giving that final performance (her swan song) that would define her existence in this world.
I gave her a eulogy wanting to say these very words.
But, no one attended; my father least of all.
He spent both the day and the night on the couch in the basement drinking beer and watching TV.
When I found him, I left him.
My new life begins nearly two thousand miles distant. I work for myself. I have my own lab. I am off the radar. I am my own woman and I am on a mission.
I am going to build my mother’s time machine.
I am going to find the answers that consume my life.
And then, I am going to make corrections.
My mother deserves better. My grandmother deserves better. I deserve better. The women of my family should take their place among the giants of science that occupy the hallowed ground of honor they so rightfully earned. There is enough room for three more.
All I need is time and (now) I have nothing but.
Two years later, I am now 38, but still look 18. I have great genetics.
I also have a time machine.
How it works, how it is powered is of no matter. I will keep this black box of information secret for now. I will explore its limitations and subsequent applications later.
Today (under the circumstances, a newly obsolete word), I am going to visit my mother when she was 18, in high school. Her journals begin here. I have many questions for her.
I also have one warning.
Since time is neither continuous nor discrete, it is always misunderstood. Time is best thought of as amorphous. All times are at all time everywhere. Time is not synchronized with space. Time is space and space is time. You exist with you always and forever. Once I understood this, it became easy to invent a machine that could not place the time and space I wanted in my grasp, but rather, filter out all of the infinite times and spaces I did not want. What remained (quoting Sherlock Holmes), no matter how implausible, must be the truth.
I located my mother, my father, and my grandmother in 1980. I do not manifest as truth here, so visiting will not initiate one of the many time paradoxes of science fiction writing. I cannot kill myself. I can create a new timeline in which my reality does not manifest itself as I know it.
Worst case, I may never be born. Penultimate worst case, I may never create the machine that permits me to return. Under the circumstances of my existence, I will risk the former as the price I must pay for the life I have chosen. As per the latter, It may not be so bad to know the outcome of events certain to occur for the next four decades.
I like my odds.
So,
I walk into Benjamin Harrison High School. The secretary asks if I am a transfer student. I lie, tell her yes, just until graduation, and explain that my paperwork will arrive shortly. I am sure my grandmother will be able to forge appropriate documentation.
This was good enough for the secretary.
She gives me a general studies schedule and I walk to my first class, English. There in the second row is my mother. In the third row, right behind her, is my father. She looks like every picture I have ever seen. She is attentive, beautiful, and smart. He does not look like the fiend I remember. He is charming and kind of cute. I see the attraction. Unfortunately, others see me see their attraction. He takes it as an invitation. She is repulsed by my existence.
I sit on the other side of class.
I have biology and history with my mother. I have algebra and PE with my father. In history, my mother tries to pass me a note. The teacher intercepts it and reads it aloud. It has two words, “GO AWAY”. The class senses tension. The look in her eyes is the look of a woman on the defensive. I might just have made an enemy today.
By the time PE begins, word has spread. My father is on the prowl. He wants to meet me. He wants to greet me. Cornered in an empty girl’s locker room, he wants even more of me.
By the top of the hour, he has raped me.
His weight and his strength he uses to pin me down and have his way. He uses my sock to stuff in my mouth to muffle my screams. He is smart enough not to tear my clothing (thus catching me while I change into my gym clothes) or leave any violent bruising. When finally caught, he claims it was all consensual and I lured him in.
I am numb to the entire experience. I am also, most likely, pregnant. It is only a matter of time to know for sure. In this time, I have options, but they are limited.
Later, at the police station, the police want me to press charges. They explain my father has a history of sordid behavior and with my testimony, thay can convict him and send him to jail for twenty years. The prosecutor informs me where he will go is a place so hostile, he will never live long enough to return.
All I have to do is sign the complaint.
My grandmother is waiting outside, posing as a relative who is responsible for me. My mother must have informed her of the crime. Where my mother is, I do not know. I should, but this is not the time to ask.
I ask the prosecutor if I can think this over. He tells me this is my only chance to do the right thing. If I consign my father to jail and death, I will not be born, my mother may never be the person she should be, and I will have a baby and the associated stigma. I am steeled for these consequences. However, I will never get to know my mother.
I sound selfish, almost hysterical. I came to know my mother, above all else.
I do not sign the paperwork.
I am out of school before I spend a second day there. My grandmother takes me in to live in a rental house on the edge of town. I know this house. This is where I grew up. This is my stomping grounds. This is where I began my questioning.
But, it (somehow) is different. The paint is brighter than I remember. The furniture is different. Perhaps it is just my perspective. I am an adult, a pregnant adult, looking through my memories with the eyes of a child.
It shouldn’t make a difference, but it does.
That night, my grandmother came to see me. For a raped woman, I am surprisingly in good spirits. This is odd. I am not of this time, thus, I am odd. Everything is too odd.
My grandmother asks for my arm. She wants a blood sample to send to the lab. She wants proof prior to giving me answers. In for a penny, in for a pound. This will take a week. Until then, I am not to leave, nor have anyone in. She asked my mother to stay away. She asked the police for a restraining order against my father. This is crazy. Nothing is going according to plan.
However, I expected as much.
I must have changed the timeline. Is this new one parallel to my old one or is it diverging? With every second, it will become more difficult to make the return trip.
I want to speak with my mother.
Ten days later, both my grandmother and mother arrived at the house. The tension was obvious, I offered them both coffee. Neither partook. My grandmother began the conversation.
“Greetings, Lillian. I wish to formally welcome you to our little time traveling family. I am Rose, your grandmother on your mother’s side. Beside me is Amy, your actual mother. Your blood work indicates a positive test result proving what I am about to relate to you. Before I go any further, do you have any questions?”
“Am I pregnant?” Yes was her reply. “However, Trent, the man who raped you is not really your father. In this timeline, you do not yet exist. This information will help assuage some of your worries.”
“How can you positively confirm that I am pregnant?” She replied that she took my blood a few years into the future (75) and ran the test herself. I assumed our mitochondrial DNA match as confirmed in her future lab.
“So the machine works both forward and reverse?” Both nodded their heads in agreement.
“Then why all of the secrecy? Mom, Amy, why didn’t you tell me? Why leave me to the harsh reality of my father? Why did you die so soon? Wait, did I just spoil something? Are you really dead in all of the timelines? Am I really saying this correctly?”
My mother, Amy, took my hand before she spoke. “We have much to talk about. All you need to do is listen. It will be very difficult for you to accept, but you must. The laws of time travel dictate that you do. Please understand.”
Over the next five hours Rose and Amy told me how the Universe worked. Those immutable laws of physics providing peace and comfort to billions are not exactly as they seem. Time is indeed immutable, but time travel is not. Once you breach the barriers man was not meant to cross, the totality of reality becomes exposed, as a raw nerve, for you to poke and jab. At first, you feel an acute sensation, then a throbbing. Finally, much like a missing tooth, you yearn for the absence and wonder why the pain left.
Time travel makes you feel all of this. However, Rose looked right at me when she stopped here, “You will feel nothing if you are pregnant.”
“Why is that?”
“Because pregnant women cannot time travel.”
That hit hard. Almost a punch in the solar plexus.
“So what is the plan?”
Amy took her turn. With a slow rhythm, she began. “I keep my life as it is. You take the role of Rose after you give birth. You will raise Lillian (her name), but will always be known to her as her grandmother. Rose will move forward in time to meet future Trent. I will soon follow to perfect the machine and give future Trent his copy. That is the deal. The cycle will be as it always was. There will remain no loose gaps or holes. You will move forward when young Lillian travels back to initiate the cycle again. It has always been this way. It will always be this way.”
I had to ask, “But what of Trent? He seems to have an extremely long life. Is he even human?”
Amy fielded this one. “He is human enough to pass as human. His kind offered the theory for time travel. We (now holding Rose’s hand and mine) engineered the machine. Anything more, well, wait until you move forward in time to understand the rest.”
It wasn’t much, but it was a start. Rose said her goodbyes and she evanescensed from the room. Amy took a more conventional route with her goodbyes. As she was leaving, I had one more question. “How do you know the baby is a girl?”
“They always are. Bank on it.”
An Act of Imagination
What’s the difference between fiction and story? A story, true or not, is meant to be told. Fiction, though it might have originated from stories, might not be said. Such is a piece like this. Such is a notebook like this where I’ve written FICTION in large capitals on the front page.
But does it truly lack an audience? Such that the bleakness of human beauty won’t alter it. With no greater purpose, it shall be beautiful. It’d have objective oneness and a strange pureness. But no. It’s meant for the man’s monstrous silhouette that has big hands and grey caustics for eyes. His eyes are mine and his brain’s a segment of my own. And his stare—so close that the two pairs of eyes become one—wilts me. When I close my eyelids, my eyes are all his. Then he looks at me—a man with empty eye sockets and a deformed head—sitting with folded arms and legs through a cherry-red tinted mist that unfurled as far as he could see. There was no sun, but the mist—more like fog—had its own light. Uh, I recall the cherry-red glow that made my sweat look like burgundy blood. I was scared, like a stray cat really. So well, he is the audience I’m writing for. He is the one who destroys this obscure beauty. I write for him as I lay down the words.
Reader, you don’t have to guess, I’m lonely. Between walls and windows, I’m trapped in my room that’s squeezed between a hallway and my parent’s bedroom. I keep the doors closed—though they can’t be locked as my room doubles as a passage—but I’ve pulled the curtains before my desk. I look at the cypress’ branches, barely visible through my room light, when I get enough privacy to grind morphine tablets. (You thought I was writing this in daylight, didn’t you?) The dust on my table is morphine. I even tried opium and alcohol, but opium’s too costly and alcohol is hard to hide. Nevertheless, you, reader, love morphine and I love how you give my eyes back. I could, if only for an hour, see dreams. Dreams don’t come during sleep—matter of fact, I don’t recall ever seeing one but have read about them—but more like pictures in active imagination. No, not active imagination either, I don’t choose them, hence I call them dreams. The images, except once which I shall come back to, are of creatures who were once humans. Withered women. And their cries, gosh-awful their cries, that are agonising even to a war-field dog. A mother and a daughter crying at each other’s faces for so long that the black of their iris was corroded by the salt in their tears and were flowing down their cheeks. The black liquid was acidic to mangle their skin and melt their pink lips. The drops fall on their white shirts. They made glass paintings of a cathedral without the faces.
The one instance I promised to come back was fairly recent. One month, seven days ago. Late September when the creatures weren’t descended humans, but a man so obscure that even the most omnipresent voices of my conscience had not seen him. I do not know why he looked to be holding a secret—a secret of a future—underneath his skin and veins. I owned his obscurity and he owned my hope. He wore loose formals—the looseness of which was hiding his starvation. His face was of a skeleton blessed with skin, that made his eyes appear bludged. He had no teeth. And he had no voice. Like a snake on slippery ice, he tried running towards me. His run, or rather walk, was of purpose. He wasn’t lost crystallising hopeless romantics and hoping to lose his faith fast, so the idealised beings turn into demons, make the shadowy inner creatures larger, and give death a purpose to accept a being it had rejected prior. Being lonely to be dismissed by death, that’s what I am, reader. I stood there and slowly a cherry-red tinted mist unfurled and made his picture fainter until the mist was white and I was looking through the window at fog-hidden cypress branches. The earliest morning fog had somehow left a burgundy impression on my eyes.
One month and seven days as I said, and I have increased my morphine dose in hopes of seeing him again. How can I forget him? How could I forget him? A person lost of a future is deemed to chase the faintest light. Even the light of starvation is better than no change. Better than not writing a word for a month. Holding my eyes off my parents who keep moving to shout at the water supplier and then going back to searching analogue cable TV signals. I don’t utter a word, I used to be sober during the day, but on the thirteenth day of his disappearance, my night high was dragged till the burgundy fog. The light entered my room as a pinpoint ray in a smoky oven. I wasn’t there: not on my bed or the floor. But a distant observer looking at a man’s outline in smoke. Its movements were deliberate and controlled. It was gesturing to my room’s dust-laden air in a choir harmony. No particle had a choice but to follow commands. I don’t know how long it went—an hour or a few days—but I was at the end of it on my chair. The fog outside was white as it should be. Even a few of the cypress branches were rattling. But my table was covered in what seemed like morphine dust. And I heard rustles in the other room. They were up… I licked it, I sniffed it. I cleaned it with my lips and lungs. The table shone as if a fresh coat of varnish was applied. It looked like coffee candy. I swear, I smelled caramel. I wanted to bite it, or if not that, at least lick it. So, I got closer. And kept getting closer. The air was again viscous and the Pacific between Russia and Alaska was tormented between us—me and the sugar top. I felt reaching it, then it was the darkest, voidest dream I had.
Days must have passed as strong green leaves had started yellowing. My head on the table—felt itchy and a strange smell tickled my nose, one you could find in a slaughterhouse. I could only open one eye, the other eyelid was shut to my cheeks and pulling it hurt. Faced sideways I could see the foot marks on the white wall up my bed. I observed—researched—the smell. It all had the burgundy film up top. Was that an imaginary artefact?
Sometime later, mother was holding my shoulders shaking them gently and calling my name. I lifted my body with great force that had the momentum of an easygoing lever. The right of my face was sizzling. The table was covered in a shiny, candy-like, coat of blood. My right eye was forced open when I realized I must be blind on the eye as there wasn’t any light but a sensation of liquid in it. I touched my face. It was like touching foot marks on dry concrete. My gaze at the table was the refraction of my mother’s who looked through me. Then that woman cried on the floor. The table shone perfect.
I failed at everything she, and he, and they had deemed me to be, reader. Or deem ‘it’ to be—that’s how I should be called from now on. I long for humans. And they know, and you know, they never come. You know so well. Now, with my face, everyone remaining would know too. Except for the man whose starvation materialised mother’s only child’s failure. And for a fact, today after writing this I’ll go for a stroll uninfluenced to finally meet him below yellow stars to chatter about something—something losing which makes one—no, me—my self no one, or reader, selfless.
Thanks for reading!
I'm new here, a little encouragement will mean a lot.
The Fool’s Tragedy
The most wonderful people are those who can make others happy. There’s nothing morally more comforting than trying to make someone laugh. However, when your work becomes your hobby, you lose your hobby to work. When something becomes your job and a professional requirement, You can professionally burn out. To avoid the mental consequences of burnout, You start burning something else. You genuinely start sacrificing your health for laughter, Because, after all, you can live with laughter, but you can only fulfill life with it.
As a fool, you wander the castle’s halls,
Where doors have no keys, no servants, no walls.
No guards or people, they’re never around,
Until you're asked to jest, to make them laugh out loud.
They’re helpful, perhaps, but not meant for your aid,
You’re one of them too, but ignored when you’ve prayed.
Kings sit on thrones while fools stand by,
Those seated demand joy from those who can’t lie.
One steps forth and listens to the king,
Who speaks at length, but clear in meaning:
“Amuse me, for hunger I feel no more,
Amuse me, or my heart will be torn.”
And so it begins, the jester tells jokes,
But meaning is lost—seriousness chokes.
He gestures! He jumps! He dances with zeal,
Strains his muscles, their pain is so real.
The rulers laugh, they struggle for breath,
As laughter consumes, till it brings near death!
It’s funny, they think, as he suffers his fate,
He stands on his head, shouting “Oh, wait!
Without these kings, where would I be free?”
He leaps before them, like a pig in debris.
He acts like an animal, but does it succeed?
The kings weep with laughter, as if souls they’d freed.
The jester is clever, but can’t carry on,
He stops all his prancing—his strength is now gone.
No longer can he leap, just sway side to side,
He halts all his efforts, too tired to stride.
The kings catch their breath, but then glance his way,
And they lost it again, in a wordless display.
Their gaze shows disdain, ungrateful and cold:
“To be a fool so hard? Do you think you’d like gold?”
The jester has heard them, now speaking with care:
“Forgive me, my liege...I feel...I despair...”
His voice frail and weak, it gave little aid,
The king stood up and then called out in rage:
“CAST HIM OUT, GET THAT FOOL OUT THE GATE,
RUN, YOU SCOUNDREL, BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!”
The jester ran fast, his legs in full flight,
As if his head might be lost that night.
He shouted aloud, “HELP! I’M THE KING’S NEED!”
He lied, for in this world, no help is decreed.
He nearly escaped from the grand hall,
But lightning struck, and he started to fall!
He turned on his back, his arms raised to shield
The part of him that he wanted healed.
No killing was allowed by royal decree,
So they grabbed his hands and pulled as he screamed.
Dragged to the place where misfortune is sure,
Where immorality is praised as pure.
To the city square, where the king won’t be seen,
The jester was scared, knowing what it would mean.
He felt like a poet losing his kin,
As the flames of his tears burned deep within.
The crowd yelled out, “Theatrum mundi!”
They impaled the fool—the world’s tragedy.
The Shadow That Grew
The walls in our house are thinner than they should be, like they’re made of stretched-out secrets. You can hear everything, even the thoughts people try not to have. I once tried to whisper a dream to myself, and I swear the walls caught it and tucked it away somewhere, probably for later use. They like to keep things here—especially the things you’d rather forget.
Tonight, the air smells like burnt toast, and not in a comforting, someone’s-making-breakfast-at-midnight way. No, it’s more like an omen, like something’s already gone wrong, and we’re just waiting for it to announce itself. Dad’s sitting in his chair by the window, casting a shadow that looks like it’s planning to stay even when he leaves. I’ve always thought his shadow has too much personality for something that’s supposed to just follow you around. It slithers and spreads itself over the floor like it’s in charge of the whole room. My own shadow, by comparison, is more of a mouse—small, quiet, content to hide in the corners, waiting for permission to exist.
When the first slap lands, it’s almost polite. Like the air tries to soften it on its way down. Funny how even physics can feel sorry for you. I don’t flinch, though—flinching would mean acknowledging it, and we don’t do that here. We pretend it’s all part of the scenery, like the wallpaper peeling in slow motion or the creaky stairs that haven’t been fixed in years.
I fold in on myself like I always do, trying to get smaller, as if shrinking could make me disappear entirely. I’ve gotten good at it—turning into something forgettable. Maybe, if I practice enough, I’ll become one of those paper cranes I read about, the kind people make when they’re wishing for something impossible. Maybe someone will find me one day, folded neatly on a shelf, and mistake me for something worth keeping.
“You think you’re better than me, don’t you?”
Dad’s pacing now, his voice slurring a little. He says it like it’s not even a question, like he’s already decided the answer. I don’t say anything. I’ve learned that answering doesn’t make a difference. Whether I speak or not, it’s like tossing words into a well with no bottom—everything just gets swallowed up.
I touch my cheek where the sting is spreading, hot and red like a wildfire, but contained. My bones don’t rattle like they used to. They’ve grown accustomed to this, the way you get used to the sound of a leaky faucet after a while, even though it still drives you mad.
He’s not really talking to me anymore, I realize. He’s talking to whatever storm lives in his chest, the one that wakes up at the same time every night and demands attention. Dad’s anger isn’t personal. It’s just bored. It’s got nowhere else to go, so it hangs around the house, breaking things because it can. I wonder if it’s ever considered a hobby. I hear knitting’s nice.
But there’s something strange tonight, something different. I feel it in the way the air hums, like it’s been waiting for something to happen. I blink, and for a moment, I see something—or someone—in the corner of the room. A woman, maybe, or something pretending to be one. Her dress is made of dust and cobwebs, and she’s standing by the window, watching. Her hands are outstretched toward me, like she’s offering something, but I can’t tell what. Maybe it’s a way out.
I blink again, and she’s gone. Or maybe she was never there. It wouldn’t be the first time my mind played tricks on me, trying to make the unbearable a little more bearable. This house is full of strange things, after all. Sometimes, I think it’s alive, that it breathes and listens and holds onto every whispered thought that escapes my lips.
Dad doesn’t notice, of course. He’s still muttering to himself, like a man who’s lost an argument no one else was having. His anger drips off him like a leaky faucet, and I can almost hear the slow, steady drip-drip-drip of it pooling on the floor, collecting at my feet. He knocks over a chair on his way out, the door slamming behind him, but the silence sticks around, like it’s got nowhere better to be.
I wait for a while, listening to the house settle back into itself, the quiet wrapping around me like a too-tight sweater. I should cry, probably. That’s what people expect, isn’t it? But I don’t. I just get up, slow and deliberate, like I’m testing to see if my legs still work. They do, though they feel more like someone else’s.
I go to the window where the figure stood—if she stood there at all—and look out into the night. The moon’s hanging there, heavy and silver, like it’s trying to apologize for something. The trees outside sway gently in the breeze, and the air is cool against my burning cheek. For a second, I wonder if maybe the shadows will come back tonight. They’ve been hiding for a while now, but they can’t stay gone forever, can they? Maybe they’re just waiting for the right moment, for when things are quiet enough to creep back in.
I stand there, watching, waiting, listening to the soft sounds of the world turning, and I swear I hear something—a whisper, maybe. I look down at my feet, and for the first time in a long while, I see my own shadow. It’s standing a little taller tonight. Maybe it’s tired of being small. Maybe I am too.
"Maybe tomorrow," I whisper to myself, "I’ll grow too."
The house creaks in response, but it feels more like a promise than a threat this time.
A Dive into Peace
If I Could Swim
I would go to a cliff, with an ocean beneath it
With the waves crashing against the rocks so high,
I'd stand at the edge with a happy sigh,
The sun would glimmer off the waters below,
And I'd let my hair in it's natural afro state down and let my worries go.
With my dim color gown fluttering in the breeze,
And my heart free from all unease,
I'd take a deep breath and close my tear filled eyes,
The free wind filling my lungs, I feel alive.
And then with a smile, I'd take steps back,
And run without fear along the cliff's track,
With arms wide open, I'd launch myself free,
And jump down into the ocean below, where the real peace could be.
With the sounds of the world drowned out in my ears,
I'd let my worries go and shed all my tears,
For in the ocean's depths, there is no strife,
Only serenity, joy, and the meaning of life.
If only I could swim and live in the sea,
There'd be nothing but peace and tranquility for me.
Confidence
Confidence
October 21, 2024
It was late in October
The Spring colors fading
The Summer winds departing
It is the season of change
People will prepare for the cold
Today the temperature reached 80
The Sun boldly gave another perfect day
People gave this Sunday
One last standing ovation
One woman gave so much more
She wore what was not in style
She did not care if you cared
She danced to her own tune
In a field of Fall’s best
Giving as good as she got
What music lingered in her mind
To ignore the thralls of her critics
And subdue their disparaging banter?
What heart must beat
To lead hundreds on the verge of emulation?
Her confidence soared quantitatively
As did the crowd in close proximity
But alas, those that wanted to break free the most
Were those who moved the least
And a calling became merely a performance
But what a performance!
Worthy of the time well spent
Filed as a memory of many
Remembering one
Instead of one remembering many
Drop Off [Galaxy Tourist Tom]
I had no idea what I was doing. As the first human to ever step foot on this alien planet I felt honored in a way. But my knees felt weak all the same, wanting to buckle from every thought of the unknown. I tapped the panel above my seat and the compartment with my bag filed open. I grabbed it from, giving it a quick inspection.
"Well at least it seems safe up there in the baggage void."
I tapped my left wrist twice and my coms screen popped up. I checked my bank's balance out of paranoia and it read.
"Bank Balance: 3,572,019 credits"
"Okay, it's a little lower than I'd like but should be good for awhile, as long as credits spend well here."
I slung the heavy pack over my shoulder and walked to the doors. Aliens of all shapes and materials crowded around with me, also waiting to get off. One that basically looked like a yellow gorilla with four eyes, and another that looked like a ball head with long spendly legs straight out of a damn kids cartoon. The space train slowed down to a halt. And the heavily rented windows shuddered, then slid up revealing a clear glass-like screen and a view of the planet.