The sky was polite after light was made and let the land go first on the fateful day that color was assigned.

Land chose green and yellow and tried out pink but ended on brown gray green and white and the sky thought she'd get her chance after that. But then Land thought that it should have more options, considering its vast range of formations from sand to clay to dirt.

"I should get all the colors cause I'm all of earth!"

The sky was unsure what to say but then it didn't have to as the late third aspect trickled in and gushed,

"What are you on about? That is simply untrue! I'm definitely bigger and I decide you!"

Water had seeped onto the scene and it wasn't having earth's greedy color scheme.

In those days water was one giant mass and all of earth's land was a single land mass formed of all the dry earth and arguably it took up a little under half of earth's surface that the sky could see. Water was larger and land didn't know as both their views were limited to the space where they dwelled, but the sky had a Birdseye view and could tell that what earth claimed was simply untrue. So it agreed with water and it was earth against the tw.

"Actually there is more of water and less of you." The sky softly stated.

Water heated now stewed and somewhat agitated said,"see land, you aren't the earth wholy."

Land was quiet a moment as it wanted to be hard headed, boldly stubborn with its head full of rocks.

Water was impatient and would be damned before it stopped from interrupting the ground and it rushed rapidly to say,"Fine, you keep all the colors you've already claimed and Sky and I will Get Blue but twice a day you have to share with the sky the full range of the rainbow. To time it... lets make it sun rise and sunset."

The land confused cracked,"That's

more like it; but it leaves you with only blue, what a sucker you are to take only one hue!"

At this water waved and almost aloof ,"That's the thing land, you've made of me an enemy. For the fact that you fibbed i now seek to conquer you. From now on I will divide you down to a few pebbles. The sky is my witness I'll erode you to rubble and then you'll know earth's natural way."

And from that moment forward up to this modern day that is exactly what water has done.

Every river, each lake, or creek, stream, or spray from a gizer or hot spring, down to glaciers melting is all simple the water having not withdrawln its threat, or "promise.

The sky also assists by carrying stratus and cumulus, and all types of clouds to rain over the dry ground.

This old rivalry is no fairy tale cause even now we can see the comraderie of the two elements. How they are still teamed up to this day; and how they have peacefully shared blue ever since.

The End

I woke up feeling happy today!

I don’t know why.

i just feel excited and anxious in a happy sort of way.

Its a feeling like I won the lottery, but I didn’t, like I woke up in a field of waving wheat in the summer.

Its a feeling like I’m with my horses again, even my service dane, Karma, wanted to play and was happy early this morning. She had kind of a rough night, I think she may have an ear infection and she was shaking her head a lot. (Have to make a vet appointment)

Now she’s resting comfortably at the end of my couch, where my feet are, her favorite spot!

Anyway, have a great day!

V.

Today at the cafe I give them a different name. When the order popped up on their computer screen, the one that shows the receipt of your order and asks for a tip, I see the barista had typed in "Allie." This could technically be a nickname for me but it never will be.

I leave my laptop screen open to get up and grab the avocado toast I had ordered. This screen was left open - the very one you're reading right now, these words plastered across the page for anyone to read while I was gone. Allie. Like the gothic dress I'm wearing to look like Wednesday Addams, it was all to pretend to be someone I'm not.

Allie. It's actually literary. I'm re-reading The Catcher in the Rye. It is the name of Holden Caulfield's younger brother, the one who died of leukemia. I'll never forget reading that section, how Holden smashed every glass window in their garage after Allie died, with his fist, later, unable to fully close that fist. He later tries punching his roommate with that fist and fails to get the result he was looking for. This anger, boiling hot, that unfairness - this is what drives me to write.

Last Friday, I heard from the fifth and final law school I had applied to. I had been rejected from the first four and thought, okay. I have one left. They took so long to respond that I thought for sure they were contemplating my application, re-reading and considering me. It's personal, applications. Did I pass the test to be above average?

I had not. Last Friday, upon hearing from the fifth and final law school, how unfortunately, they had had too many applicants to be able to accept everyone, how they had so many qualified applicants but not everyone can have a spot in the incoming class, I punched a wall.

Perhaps we are all pretending. I'm not Allie. I will not become a law school student this fall. I'm not Wednesday Addams. I didn't bleed after I had punched the wall. Even at that, I had failed. I hadn't left an impression on the hard plaster, or whatever it is that my fist had hit, whatever you call that hardness that can't be moved despite pushing against it. Anger that is misplaced, failing to reach the cosmic universe, swallowed whole and producing nothing but fists that can't close, blood that doesn't spill, a name I can't call my own.

It hurts when you don't get what you want, when the universe is seemingly conspiring against you. It hurts to be a writer, to spill these words. Why was I afraid that someone at the cafe would see my words plastered across the screen, read that I was pretending to be someone I am not?

Isn't the point of pretending to want to be convincing, to leave the impression against the metaphorical wall?

Hm. Is any life truly worth fighting for?

Life is something that provides the opportunity for experience. "Life" is essentially nothing without memory.

That is to say, a truly fulfilled life cannot be attained without experience.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with living a vicarious life... to a certain extent. There are limits to everything, including life itself.

Experience is what makes life worth living, and, dare I say, worth keeping.

What is the point of fighting for a live that one is not living?

Now, of course there are exceptions.

A vicarious life may bring a small handful of people in this world true, pure satisfaction. For instance, I'm currently squeezed between two pillows on a velvety couch covered in food crumbs, perfectly content with living my life through the lives of those behind the screen in my hands. There is nothing that I plan to do to change it. And I would fight to the death for this life.

Content Warning: Sexual assault.

____________________

I'm sure you know where this piece is going, already. "I never did."

It went something like this:

"We've been together for a year and a half. I thought you loved me-- you said you loved me. All these months--"

"--I never did."

"You never what?"

"I never did-- love you, that is."

His voice was cold. His blue eyes were the color of steel instead of the skies I'd become accustomed to. He was telling the truth.

We were sat on the porch steps beneath the lamppost. School had been out for a few weeks, and I was finally sixteen...finally legal. I was naive. We'd spent the last summer in the balmy grip of sweaty, sensual first love. I assumed this summer would be the same. You didn't just walk away from someone you'd invested this much of your short life into, did you?

All the things we did...

I'd lost my virginity to him.

I'd lied for him, when we'd been caught and they'd sent me to court, bringing up charges of statutory rape against him.

I'd lied.

I lied like I never had before and never will again.

I was an actor at the time and at the threat of sounding like an egomaniac-- quite good for a 15 year old girl. I put on one hell of a show.

They believed me.

They believed me when I told them we'd just shared kisses and caresses, that we'd known each other for years--that when the officer had caught us in the back seat of a beat up Honda civic that night, it'd been the first time. It hadn't.

Six months earlier he'd actually raped me in the front seat of said Honda civic, though I didn't realize that was what had happened until a year later, as diluted in my fantasy as I'd been at 15.

I didn't tell the social workers that he'd started dating me when I was just fourteen...and he was eighteen. I didn't tell them about the scar on my lower back from the time I'd said No. No. no no no no. NO. I didn't tell them about the ways in which he'd abused the body of a barely-woman, using me like some tattered sex doll. I didn't tell them.

I didn't tell anyone.

I didn't know it was wrong.

All I knew was that my heart was breaking.

All I knew was that I loved him. I really did.

I'd given my treasure to swine.

He got up and left after uttering those terrible words: I NEVER did.

I went upstairs to my bed and contemplated suicide.

I didn't do it, obviously-- but that is another story entirely.

This story continued with a girl who spent the next year flinching away from any relationship whatsoever. I lost every friendship I'd ever had, the ones who'd been by my side since second grade... they slowly faded away as I spiraled into an empty husk of my former self.

The following year, grade 12-- I attempted to find my power. I preyed on the boys, exchanging saliva and desperation in alcoves and against lockers, then roughly shoving them away when things began to progress past kisses. I was horny and angsty and utterly terrified to have anyone lay hands on me, terrified to give up any semblance of control, terrified to love or be loved.

Against all odds, I met my husband in grade 12. The first time I saw him, he was dancing with another girl at homecoming. He was terribly tall and muscled, but inexplicably awkward. He looked very much like a teddy bear. He looked safe.

I locked eyes with him across the dance floor and I think somewhere, in that moment, the both of us knew that I'd make him mine. Six months later, I did.

He was safe.

He was also just as broken as I was.

We filled in the holes in each other's hearts. He kept me safe and I kept him safe.

He told me about every terrible thing that had ever happened to him.

I told him about every terrible thing that had ever happened to me...

Except...

"I never did."

I wanted to pretend that part hadn't happened. I wanted to pretend that I was too strong, too much of an over-comer to have ever been used so maliciously.

We got married.

We had babies.

We built careers and homes and a life beyond our greatest fantasy.

But some nights...

He'd reach out and I'd curl away.

Some nights...

I'd push him away.

He'd roll over with hurt feelings and I'd cry into my pillowcase.

Some nights...

I'd refuse to be touched at all. Not even comforted by him.

Some nights...

I'd flail and kick and murmur NO, until he shook me awake with questions in his eyes and sadness in his heart.

It took a decade for me to tell him.

His heart broke-- I saw it. His face crumpled in shame and he touched me gently on the cheek, tears in his eyes, crease in his brow. The pain written starkly in his gaze, "You never told me." He cupped my face in his large hands, "I didn't know. I didn't know. All this time...I thought it was about me... I didn't know. I am so sorry." He'd pulled me to his chest then, held me like a baby bird, and run calloused fingers along my back until I'd fallen asleep. Safe.

And I've been safe ever since. He is careful and so am I. We hold to each other, but do not crush... because as much as I'd like to say that the pain went away...

It never did.

It wasn't really the rape.

It wasn't the broken heart.

It wasn't the weird waste of the last year of my childhood.

It wasn't the friendships that broke irreparably in the aftermath.

It was the being used.

It was the lie.... Being told that I mattered when...

I never did.

The mist shrouded the mountain like a snake that is about to squeeze its prey

At this place, far away from human civilization, I found my nirvana—

fresh air, fresh view, and fresh climb

Trees stretched their fingers towards the azure sky while bees and flies

circled around their trunks, always searching for something,

maybe blossoms that never grew on the branches

I too, am searching for something...

Peace and serenity

Darting around in circles, the swallows performed gymnastics as they rushed upwards, plunged down in neat swoops, and then spiraled into the air

Grey-headed bullfinches sat unperturbedly on flowering bushes and fruit-laden trees

as rain lightly licked their feathers

A bird hopped on its feet and looked at me with curious, black eyes

I stood there, unmoving

A straw-thatched house perched on a grassy slope, its door ajar as if inviting me in From the west, a puff of wind lightly tingled the straw on the roof and dipped its fingers in the sluggish river below

Sheltered by lush plants and friendly animals, I even forgot that this was a tourist site—it was a comfortable home for me

However, my reverie was broken when my mother

and some crazy monkeys stepped in my way

“Smile!” my mother yelled to me as she snapped a picture

of me gaping at the mountain

“Oh mom, you broke the silence!” I complained

“We’re going down the mountain anyway,” she replied

As I descended, I took one last look at the startling Giotto-blue sky

and the swallows that dotted it

But before my we reached the bottom, several monkeys blocked the way

One monkey grabbed my leg and hugged it as if it were a precious piece of banana

Another monkey approached and reached for my floral scarf

I was aware that Mom was probably saving this memory inside her camera

As I detangled out of the monkeys’ reaches, I realized that

I was actually enjoying their presence—

that was until one jumped on my back and tried to rip my hair out

And I also realized that my water bottle in my backpack was gone

As I veered off into the craziness that represents my world,

I stole a moment to just breathe,

took in the magnificent view,

and found peace to take with me

But even with the flowers, trees, and other parts of nature

that I feverishly love so much,

from the safe haven of my backyard to the green spaces of the park,

I felt at peace on this mountain

I rested on the rocky slope overlooking the mountain,

able to gaze out much farther and stand much taller than I typically can

I enjoyed the rough climb upwards because at the apex

I could survey what looked like the whole world

On that mountain, I realized that what captured my heart about the climb is that once I reached my destination, I became part of Nature—

I was in the clouds,

the river flowing below,

the ghostly mist,

the twittering birds,

and the playful monkeys

Drawing ever closer to the

Crematory, my hands

Shook and quaked,

My stomach tightened,

My eyes watered, and

My mind—raced

With images of babies

Engulfed in those

Infernal flames, of

Innocence gripped in

The hands of evil.

My mother, beside me,

Was reticent, for once.

Her face was shrunken

And pained,

Wrecked with

Grief,

Disbelief,

And

Remembrance.

Suddenly, there were

Only a few steps

Before I reached

The pit of doom.

Three more steps.

Two more.

Alas, one more...

I thought of

My little garden.

The passion fruit flowers

Thrived heartily

With everything

In place.

Now, my

Passion fruit flowers

Shriveled up,

My family torn apart,

And my customs

And beliefs all deprived

Of

My bygone days spent

Poring over

Music scores,

Playing on the

Piano,

The giggling and chatting at

Marketplaces with

My friends,

The stately

Family dinners,

And my dream

To become a professional

Pianist

Were all swept

Away.

Inside of me, it was

As if the "merry stream"

That ran

Through was frozen

Or parched, never

Moving again.

Slowly, I forced

My mind to shut

Out the noise of

Our trampling,

The noise of people

Dying, of the

Fiery pit, of

My beating

Heart

And just

Feel

Nothingness,

As if to embrace

Death

Once and for all.

All too soon,

I felt, smelled,

Heard, and

Tasted

Nothingness.

Oh, this wouldn't do.

Nope.

What the hell was this - a mortgage? In this bougie city? Sure, maybe Marxism had been a phase in fifth grade but socialism remained the ultimate stance of the Working Class, and TW would have to work until death.

Who the hell had TW married - this asshole? Bossy, spoiled, inconsiderate - all the shit TW had struggled not to be growing up. What, did we marry a project? No? Then fuck this shit. Let somebody else school that fool. Why should he get to be a jerk when we wasted all our energy being a better person?

This job? This job was shit. Stressful, underpaid, underappreciated. We're not bringing up the socialism again but definitely no. That had to go too.

It took some time, some awful, awful time that felt like death as the pieces of the life that just wouldn't do fell apart one-by-one. There was struggle - like choking old vines that had grown comfortable and wanted to cling to their old supports. Tough shit.

Little T didn't accept weakness.

Since getting into arguments with little boys on the playground at age 5, Little T had held her ground. Always. She'd listened to Grandma -- never fall in love, don't accept the shit they put on you, read and do well in school -- and it hadn't failed her yet. She handled the drama of her well-meaning parents, who'd unfortunately had four too many kids and struggled to raise them all when their own emotional development was still lacking. She had handled the constant expectations of a fucked up school system that rewarded talent and lazy teaching over personal development - typical Capitalist institution, don't spend or invest in anything just take the easy fruit and pay for the present with the ruin of the future - and still maintained a straight-A perfect record with a very active bitch face, thank you. Yet despite all the comments of, "Oh, such an old soul!" she continued to find sanctuary in a room filled with the toys, imagination and stuffed army of her inner child.

Because Little T was still a child - not a third parent or a future scholastic achiever like everybody wanted. And as Little T quickly realized, there were no real "adults"- simply older, bossier humans who felt entitled by experience and made all the same mistakes of their younger counterparts over and over again.

Like this adult Little T had grown into.

Big T needed help. Obviously she'd lost sight of who she'd originally planned to be. No vacation in years? Her dreams of working to make a difference - dashed to pay bills. Her continual search for fun and adventure - set aside indefinitely, partly thanks to a stick in the mud she'd attached herself to. She'd marched headlong into responsibility and drudgery like a good soldier sent to die in the field of adulthood. And now here she sat at 3 A.M., crying in the bathroom with no idea why.

Fuck. That. Shit.

Little T made changes. The hair - fix it. The name - change it, let's be a proper Bond Villain, those ladies were deadly. The home - move it. The job - new one, nonprofit. The body - fell apart, but it had never fit right growing up anyway so fuck it for now. The drugs - ditch 'em, we don't need drugs when we can cope right. The boy - let him go. If little boys couldn't keep up they had to stay behind, that had always been the rule of the playground. Little T didn't follow others, she led. This housewife shit was never gonna work long term, not with some stubborn jerk who couldn't be bothered to console his wife at night. If Little T had to support herself then fuck it - why support someone else.

Slowly Big T started to emerge again. Some silly quirks and mistakes, some glitches here or there, but they worked themselves out. Little T had always planned for a life like Grandma's, and old age was something to look forward to if you played your bridge cards right. Big T just needed a shift and her course would correct just fine.

The new home had space now. Space to rest, in privacy and solitude, without judgement or expectation. Space to create and work, at her own pace and time, on the things she really cared about. Space for pets - including the cats her ex had always resented and hated - with parks to investigate and neighbors to greet. Space that was all Big T, no tired and washed out TW.

And as Big T gradually regained a sense of self, Little T smiled and retreated to the inner walls of the heart she'd always defend.

Because sometimes it takes a little girl to do a warrior's job.

I watched it all from my spot on the bench beneath the cedar-pole awning of la Hacienda Gustamos over the course of one solitary month. During those thirty days, for lack of anything better to do, I whittled their likenesses from chunks of manzanita wood as I watched them work; the super-hard, desert-dried ironwood forcing me to make frequent pauses for blade resharpening, but by the time their construction project was completed so was mine, as I had carved out rather lifelike 3D figures of them all… boy, girl, and burro.

The pair rode double into Ciudad Juarez with the boy behind, their bouncing synchronized astride the swayed back of an overloaded, yet quick-stepping burro, the burro‘s pace appearing suited to the pair’s dispositions. A bulging towsack tied to it’s rump increased the burro’s already considerable load. The day was warm in Ciudad Juarez, as always, the sky clear, as usual. The burro came to an abrupt standstill on the banks of the city’s thinly flowing river, whether reined in or thirsty I could not say. The pair climbed down from it’s back there, hefting their bundle down into the soft mud along the river’s bank as the ass splayed out it‘s legs giraffe-like and drank of the warm, muddy water. The young man opened the sack and spread tools from it out across the ground while his even younger and smaller companion, without the slightest pause to rest, immediately began picking up driftwood along the river’s bank, passing over the water-logged ones so as to get only the straightest and stoutest sticks. Once satisfied that she’d found sufficient wood to make sturdy stakes she stepped off a large rectangle, bending at exactly measured corners to carefully poke, one-by-one, the gathered sticks as far into the packed-sand earth as she was able. Having chosen a mallet from the tools laid across the ground, El Niño followed her from stick-to-stick, holding each one upright with his free hand as he drove it deeper into the parched sand with his hammer until there was a clearly defined, staked out foundation. The pair proved tireless in their endeavors; she shaping bricks from the mud and grass along the river’s banks and laying them in the sun to dry, he cutting manzanite wood into timbers before shaping the timbers into workable widths using ax and adze, as warranted. When enough timbers were shaped the pair drug two of them so that their thicker ends touched either stake on the western side of the foundation she had marked off, allowing their narrower, upper ends to stretch out along the ground towards the setting sun. Next he chose a hand drill from amongst the laid out tools. Using it, the boy attached cross braces at both the timbers’ midway points and their far ends with carefully whittled, wooden pegs driven into the holes he had drilled. He then removed the stakes La Niña had marked the foundation corners with before digging deep, narrow post holes from the spots where the stakes had been exhumed. Finally, El Niño tied a rope to the center of the furthest cross brace, looped the other end around the burrow’s saddle pommel, and then, with the girl leading the burrow eastward, I bore witness as the framework slowly lifted. Like feet into shoes the bottom ends of the timbers slid almost magically into his pre-dug holes as the constructed contraption arched heavenward, so that I nearly applauded their work from my shaded bench until thankfully realizing in time that it was too warm for such effort, and slunk back against the cool, shadowed wall of la Hacienda Gustamos. When the whole apparatus was nearly upright the girl halted the donkey in place while the boy hung a string from it to check for plumb. She led the ass backward and forward by it’s halter until the boy was satisfied enough with the framework’s placement that he was comfortable quickly-but-carefully backfilling around what now were the perfectly plumbed and squared skeleton-leg posts and joists of a rather large wall. Over the next several days I drank warm tequila, ate cold tamales, whittled, and watched as three more walls were lifted and attached in much the same manner, all of it done with plenty of energy, yet also with such efficiency and planning that hardly a modicum of perspiration exerted from the trio, the donkey a strange, yet seemingly equal partner to the pair.

During the next week peaked rafters were mitered and placed, scaffolds were constructed, mortar was mixed from limestone, chalk and slag, and bricks were laid, while from inside la Hacienda Gustomas la senorita brought out cervesas for breakfast, or tequila for supper, either drink designed to wash down the plentiful tamales she handed to me along with. She was a kind woman, la senorita, so I made love to her sometimes, when I was able. Yes, she might have been exceedingly ugly to the eye, but there is more than one way for a woman to be beautiful, and I did believe her beautiful, nearly as beautiful as were the babes a-building alongside yonder river bank.

Next, mortar was smoothed into the chinks of the laid pole roof, with earth pitched over to insulate. A door was added to the front with steps leading to it and glassless windows with wooden shutters placed along the building’s north and south sides, presumably for light. The plank floor the pair crafted was the only one of it’s kind in all of Ciudad Juarez, the other buildings having dirt floors, or flagstone, and was raised from the ground to negate the infrequent flooding of the river. Finally, a manzanita cross decorated the front crown, identifying the structure as being God’s holy dwelling.

And then the pair saddled the burro and went. Why? Where to? Whether or not they ever prayed at the alter they built? Who can say? Without a word to anyone the pair and their donkey finished their building and went.

For a year I gazed with wonder at the wondrous work the pair and their burro left behind them. I often picked my own carved figurines up from where they lived on the bench beside me, asking questions of them that it was not in a piece of wood to answer, but there was no other to ask. During that year the morning cerveza’s, and the afternoon tequila’s, and the tamale diets took their tolls on an already sickly body, so that when he arrived and moved into the church for shelter it was with difficulty that after two days of consternation I could finally pick up my figurines and make my way over to the church for my first time visiting it, and up the solidly built wooden stairs to meet him, and to ask why he had chosen here to stop, and to tell him that the church belonged to others, and to ask him to leave it perfect, just as the lovelies who built it had left it, por favor? I laid my figurines on the alter for him to see and I knelt, beseeching him to go yon, and back to the dessert from which he’d come, that this house was built by loving hands for another… for their Lord and Savior.

”And is he not also yours?”

I gulped and swallowed, never having believed before, but their work had inspired. It had produced a longing in me for more, and for better. I longed to be like “them” in their sodality, and in their artistry, and in their inspiration.

“I hope that he could be.”

She found me there on the river’s bank, La señorita de la Hacienda Gustamos. She did not cry, but fished my figurines out of the mud instead, dunking them one-by-one under the river’s heavy current. Seeing their beauty and sensing their worth la señorita washed them in the water, saving the tiny burro with it’s sack for last, and finally her knees where she’d knelt in the mud, neverminding her bare feet as they squished back to dry land. She’d made a pocket in the folds of her apron with which to carry her newly gained treasures and using it she headed away from her casa, and towards la cantina where hungry, if not godly, men awaited. Sometimes hunger was sufficient for her needs. The statuettes would bring enough to buy cornmeal, beer, and tequila for the next lost soul who might follow the smell of hot tamales to her door, and this man would perhaps allow her to feel both some outer and inner sanctum in this, the harshest of lives.

And thusly, unseen and unknown by the world; through hallucinations, kindnesses and miracles, are those lost somehow saved.

Amen

(I started this awhile back for some challenge or another and lost interest, as I often do. All of the religion writes sparked by @EstherFlowers1’s recent “Challenge” made me decide to resurrect it. The story idea came after visiting the staircase in “The Loretta Chapel.” The story was intended to be, after a comment I believe from @JulienSorel, a practice exercise in building longer sentence structure into my writes, thus the many run-ons which I hope you did not detect, as that was my goal, or at least that you did not mind ;). I don’t think it is completely terrible, after a little polishing.)