An ash tray lay before 

your sullen eyes,

a limonade as 

first place prize...

your red scarf

 à la mode,

darling, you look

straight out of Vogue...

the waiter politely babbles,

"Monsieur, Monsieur!"

you respond, accent with a lilt,

"No need, mon ami, here I'm a well known connoisseur."

You settle the balance, 

"L'addition, s'il vous plait." 

Strutting across the promenade,

the cafe life suits you well, wouldn't you say?

It had been a month.

7:09 pm, on a Saturday night, the start of spring break for her. The sun was still up, thank you daylight savings time. She was being driven to the far away tennis courts of Cassia Park. She felt that it was very much needed to spend some time there. Walking over the opposite end of the court, with a breeze hitting her legs along the way, she noticed across the way a children’s party. This brought her back to her 4th birthday party, a fond memory of Dr. Pibb soda, chocolate frosted confetti cake, a picnic table that was set to “birthday zone” and her once-upon-a-time-family singing as she blew out the striped candles. A fond memory, one she would remember as she lay on her deathbed.

As she bent her knees, prepping herself for the starting serve, the breeze that had hit her legs suddenly wafted towards her nose, bringing a sweet scent of sour candy belts and cotton candy. It matched the sun that was slowly drowning itself, she noticed out of the right corner of her eye. Everything seemed at peace… until she had gotten to the point of pure frustration from the fact that her last 22 attempts at a serve were rewarded with the net. What use was playing tennis if you couldn’t even start? Finally, she gathered up all the balls, and told herself to rethink and just get the ball into the proper square, whatever it took. She tried to ace the ball once again, and failed. The next try was feeble, weak, and rather embarrassing for a player of her stature, but by God it landed. And this happened over and over, until she finally got the hang of it.

The sweet scent of the candy would sometimes get caught in the wind, and she would once again be reminded of all the things she was trying to hit away. And those things did not include tennis balls. The bittersweet scent somehow saddened her, but smelled so distinct that she wanted it to be made into a perfume.

As she walked towards the gate, to the car waiting beside the curb, she tried to find the scent among the crisp wind again, to smell the color of the sunset.

But it was nowhere to be found. 

It was Friday, May 5th. I attended the For King and Country concert, in hope for anything, some salvation, from humanity, from God.

And that was when Luke stood up, and told us this: “Death has lost its sting.”

That hit me. Something already awe inspiring had become much more. I went into that concert tired, groggy and down. Looking for help. And it was there, crying out to God, where I realized the lesson to be learned was to have my faith in humanity restored at last.

Amazing grace… how sweet the sound… the crowd sang in absolute darkness. Even the woman a few chairs away, disabled and nearly a mute, reached out, with her trembling voice, and shaky hands. A hymn of hums, a song of heavenly compassion, kindness, a mutual understanding of God’s presence and hope and faith, all in a lullaby.

We are stronger. Love is stronger. No matter how many bombs descend from the skies, how many cities are destroyed, how many bullets lay upon the ground; it cannot kill love.  Do you realize we have already won? Every act of love, defeats 2 acts of animosity. We are not silenced, not even if our vocal chords are ripped from our bodies. This world is cruel, it was not meant to be this way. We lose hope, we kill ourselves hoping to find peace. We have let our natural instinct become a monster; to destroy.

But you know what?

It doesn’t start with 1 million people.

It doesn’t start with a crowd of 10 people.

It. Starts. With. You.

One person, one person at a time. Never leaving anyone, man, woman, child, out of the equation. We can change the world, if we will to. There is a reason you are born unto this world, and it is not to mope under your office desk or cry to the Heavens above. Think of it this way: if you don’t do it, who will? One single number can change the game entirely. One single vote can determine who wins the presidency, even. Your voice matters. So I dare you to use it, and use it for good. You are the domino effect, your actions influenced and created so many things already. Do not be afraid to look back upon them.

All it takes, is for you to accept the challenge. 

I’ve never been any good at starting a paragraph. Never been good at figuring out the perfect sequence of words, or how to keep the story alive. Truth is, I’m more concerned about the end of something, rather than the beginning. And honestly, it’s hard. Hard to try and convey the entire story into a sentence of about 5 words, to try and entertain you until the very end. But you were never really about beginnings either, were you?

Even now, as I sit here in this hollowed out coffee shop, typing the very words before your eyes, I’m writing two things at once. One idea above this one, more gears shifting in the clocktower inside my head. My attention span is not the problem, believe me, but the fact that there is so much to say and do, that I struggle to contain each idea with patience. And perhaps that’s why I struggle with beginnings; they’re painfully slow and I might as well be diagnosed with ADHD, with how fast my fingers are typing, the way my eyes dart around the screen, where my heart shutters and electricity sparks with interest and captivation. I never end up liking the starting words anyways; it seems as though there is a pressure to convey the entire storyline in so few words, and honestly how could you? Did you learn any lessons, did you finally hear that click of ontological clarity in that one tiny sentence? I bet you didn’t.

To Kill a Mockingbird, a book anyone with an English major has read, starts off with, “When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.” Tell me, did you conclude the story then? Do you figure out why it was a sin to kill a mockingbird, from those 16 words?

Not in the slightest. So let me end my little rant, for all of our sake.

Beginnings were never the best part, because after all, you were never really about beginnings either, were you? 

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those it will not break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.” - Ernest Hemingway

When the sky has fallen in your own little gravitational version of an Earth, a world you called you own, only then will you finally realize it was already fathomed by the stars, written by the Fates themselves. The universe has a funny way of existing, I’ve always thought. It forces pain upon your back like a Sherpa carrying the ropes of many up the mountain top.

Pain is inevitable. And how ironic it is, that you need it to survive. And the sad thing is, it either becomes your drug or kills you. But drugs and death have always been tied together, haven’t they? Those who bear that cross are the most strongest, but also handicapped in a way. They have lost a once functioning part of themselves to the darkness, to the shadows that lay behind the veil. They fall to pits of despair, drenched in anger and misunderstanding, but they thrive. It is a civil war that will never have enough bloodshed, never enough ammunition. This tragedy is part of being human, the price we pay for existing in between the lines of Heaven and Hell. It kills the light inside of you, and some days you won’t feel entirely as yourself, or recognize the back of your hand, but such an experience is worth a thousand kilos of gold and silver, and sought out by many who otherwise would be looking for guidance from the stars. 

I’ve always loved rain. How Tumblr-like, yes, I know. But, yes, it is quite possibly one of my favorite chapters in my own little book of life. Especially at night, when all you hear is the pitter patter against the glass windows, the occasional slur of a car’s motor, as the wheels slip and slide past the puddles. It was peaceful in a world that was otherwise. Calming, much better than the bizarre apps that echo so called nature noises throughout your hollow bedroom. I’ve always loved the words associated with rain. Drizzle, slur, downpour, sludge…

It always made me feel less alone, less distraught, and more real. The way the drops would hit my skin, a cold harsh flush of reality to flatter my senses. The way my bones absorb the little ocean from the sky, free from salt and the crustaceans of humanity’s existence. Pure. Something pure had found its way to me, a cry from Heaven’s most finest angels themselves, washing my sins to the river. But who is to say the river will not be tainted as well?

A little droplet of precipitation, a little droplet of making the world seem less of a lonely place, but even more so in a way that my tears would mimic the droplets that are to wash them away.

And it is with this, that I learned, that even the Earth needed to cry, too. 

- April 18, 2017 at 1:07 am - 

Seeing the peril of the world came as a splash of ice water;

It found me, beat me senseless

until I, too, became numb.

We live in this place,

This sorrowful land,

Where fear is the ultimate puppetmaster.

Preachers moralize hate,

Disciples pray to money trees.

Students swallow their piles of homework as suicide notes.

The essence of time has become non-existent,

Just in favor of our consciousnesses.

Justice serves black holes,

Laws serve themselves a plate of “holier-than-thou.”

Genders, races, religion, identification;

We are being labeled by these pronouns,

And we’re following each other to the slaughterhouses.

Sin runs through water reserves,

Bullets become the new fertilizer.

Bombs puncture a child’s home.

It’s hunger versus obesity,

Poverty lies under a grave.

Cold hard cash paves roads,

Burying the sound of the screams that lay under it.

We are the only destruction of ourselves, the ones to fear.

Is this why we’re putting knives through our neighbors’ backs?

Why we’re cutting the cord of our humanity?

When does it stop?

When does it end?

We’re all pleading for mercy from a God we don’t know.

For help, call 911,

There’s an emergency.

But there’s no saving a world,

That does not want to be saved. 

I recall remembering that your favorite flower was a carnation,

deep red.

The scent always reminded me of you,

always replaced "Roses are red, violets are blue..."

The aching urge to bloom,

was only met with a pesticide made to kill.

Soon you lay crumpled up, and ill. 

Sometimes I would catch the wind red-handed, 

bringing the oh-so-familiar scent to my lungs,

because then again,

how could I ever forget, what once made you feel young?

And then man said, "Let my greatest fear, be the fear of loss."

Time winds down as we become natural slaves to it. The days become shorter, the nights horrifyingly longer, due to the aggravation of insomnia and depression, or the fact that I perhaps did not accomplish much of anything that day.

Soon the images I stared at whilst driving down Memory Lane became blurs in the distance; a dissociation if you will. All momentum froze, as the realization of the sinking sun appeared before me.

This was the problem I encountered; losing everything, but nothing. Seeing the stars before the sky. That old saying, how does it go? "You don't realize what you have until it's gone." I found this statement to be shockingly true, and so did the rest of the world, at the least the part that was somewhat aware to the fact that we have nothing to grasp hold of, except for our own skins and dignity. All these moments, these precious memories we have stitched to heartstrings and neurons, nothing but pure illusions that the clouds sometimes let us in on. The spherical form of the Earth is rolling down a hill, but it seems that I have become so incredibly adapt to the falling that I'm barely noticing myself go down with it.

All the moments that have passed me by, countless. The imprints I have left on polluted sidewalks, the slight smells of various perfumes wafting through the cold air, the physical forms of objects I mistakenly hold so dear to my working body, a creation of blood and flesh that somehow stands up right. Will I remember the way my childhood home once smelled, or will it become just another cologne labeled déjà vu? Will I remember the tight embrace of my mother, the way her hair was not speckled with gray tints, when I am elderly as well? Upon my death bed, will I recall the crinkles of a child's eyes as their face fills with innocent laughter, the feeling of turning the first page of a new novel, the way the sun sets and rises, leaving holy shadows and early dew along its path.

One day, all of this will be gone.

As depressing as that can be.

One day, all my memories, from the first sight of a Fisher-Price toy, to the final chapter of my life's story, and everything in between, gone. No one will be here to remember it, no one will be able to look back upon them as I did, no matter how many photographs I litter my wall with. The lessons will become just more grains of gravel to the dirt, the laughter, the grief, the emotions, all deposited into the bank account of kingdom come, or thrown into the coffin that lay under the cold clay of the Earth.

If I were you, I would best be counting my gourds, and perhaps my blessings, too. We can only try to shuffle all the moments happening now into the cavities of memory, because one day I won't be waking up to the smell of coffee, but to the bittersweet earthiness of tea, instead.

We created a monster,

hung it upon the desolate walls of this house,

and fell slaves to it,

bow down to the hands of consistency. 

The alarms in our head are reigning control,

the ticks and tocks slashing the veil,

through rotation of the Earth, we fall flat. 

Disguised as an appointment, 

cloaked behind the sun dials,

the devil glares through the mechanics.

Sand beads fall through the hourglass,

and all falls through the cracks of the Earth. 

Hanging by the thread of the moment, 

ropes strung around our necks,

time pieces loom over us,

as a dark cloud in the night sky. 

In a future where the past and present have been summed up, 

a concoction of punch cards and calendars.

When all is dead,

blame the hour,

where apocalypses have come and gone,

something only the hands of time have told.