The Pool in Brant
There was an octopus
And a hippopotamus
Who swam in a pool in Brant.
There was also a yeti
Who loved his confetti
Visiting that pool in Brant.
And along came giraffe
Who simply had to laugh
At the sight he saw there in Brant.
The bunch sure was frolicsome,
But fully awesome
Hanging out in the pool there in Brant.
Then something abominable
Simply unpardonable
Did happen there at the pool in Brant.
Up floated a huge capsule
Showing crossbones and a skull
Thus poisoning the pool there in Brant.
Think of a song with no music
The pause is pregnant -
It lingers with the emotion of the words that were there.
It breathes
It sings
It moves.
When music fills that space, even the most beautiful music,
The pause no longer breathes, sings, or moves of it's own accord.
It is pushed and pulled into something else.
The pause without words, without music, leaves room for thought and reflection.
The friend without words, without cliches, leaves room for reality.
The friend who forgets their words at the door leaves room for something else to fill the pause. They allow the space to breathe, sing, and move the way it needs to.
That friend who leaves their words behind becomes the world, just as the space in a song becomes the emotion within it without even trying.
They embody the silence that now comes from the loved one, and become greater comfort than any words could possibly be.
The silence means more than the words.
Cry For Help: The Email I Can’t Send
Your abuse never left. I put makeup over the bruises, I pull my hair over the scars, but they're still there. The words you said that cut deep into me and made me question myself over and over again just won't go away.
"I hate you when you do that."
"That looks disgusting. If some guy took you home, they'd turn and run screaming the other direction."
"You're lucky I love you, because no one else would want you."
"All you are to me are those jugs on your chest."
They echo in my head, bouncing off the walls of my skull until my head is ready to burst. Even now, four years away from you, you still stand there like a demon, haunting me, possessing me. You send an email to remind me of the hold you still have.
You remind me of how you remember "everything about me," and somehow you don't realize that you've destroyed the happy girl I was and left me with a shell. I walk around with a mask of what I used to be after you hollowed me out like a crab leg and then tossed away the husk of a shell.
I remember more than your words. I remember your manipulation. I remember how you would take what I was saying and turn it around on me. I remember how you would point out my insecurities. I remember how you threatened to kill yourself if I left. I remember the days you told me you hated me and loved me. I remember the day you proposed to me and then later the same night told me that no one would ever love me.
You send emails that sound so innocent. Like you didn't wreck me on the rocks of your island.
All I had wanted to be was your one constant. I had wanted to help you through the pain of your life, and to help you fight your monsters and face your demons. Instead, you twisted my arm and abused me. You broke my spirit and spat in my face. You cheated on me, you broke my heart, and I let you because I didn't want you to be alone.
You scare me now. Your simple black and white letters terrify me and make me not want to leave the house. It feels as if you are a weight that will never go away: a looming, black presence. I am afraid that you will attack me in the street, even though I know you live miles away.
The worst part is that you say I changed your life. You say you just want to tell me that I made a difference. You say that I was the first person to let you be yourself and to be there for you.
I realize this is more of your manipulation: if I changed your life I can't resent the fact that I ever met you. I can't hate you, and I can never tell you how much I'm crying as I write this. I don't get to tell you that I've never recovered. I don't get to tell you that I still hate myself, even after four men since you have told me that you were wrong. I don't get to press send.
I need help, I need my scars to not hurt anymore. I need my bruises to heal. I don't know how to undo what you've done to me.
Don’t Talk to Strangers
“Don’t talk to strangers.” Mom’s words echo in your head as you stare into the icy eyes glaring at you over the counter. You have tuned out his words by now, but the spit flies from his lips onto your face as his reddens. That old adage rings in your head over and over again as you stare at him; “Don’t talk to strangers.”
Clearly, the man is angry because he believes he has been slighted by the chain that you work for, but the point of the matter is that it isn’t your fault. You wonder how you ended up here, at this dingy workplace, with the flickering lights, and the angry men who spit on you as they scream. You vaguely wonder why your mom’s voice is in your head and are thankful no one can hear it. You resist the urge to wipe the water from your face.
The man is doing all he can to make your blood pressure rise as much as his clearly has. You know, however, that this is not your fault, and is in fact the fault of the chain’s policies. You yourself have faced the blunt end of this stick before, and understand this man’s pain, but are not allowed to articulate it by other company policies.
You are left, soaked to the bone by this man’s anger, ready to give up and throw in the towel. Your work has you exhausted anyway, and now to the point of hearing your mother’s voice in your head. “Don’t talk to strangers.” You’ve decided now that instead of pointing the man to the manager, you’re going to take her advice. You say nothing.
The man stares at you for a long moment after clearly having said his piece. His chest is heaving and he’s moved from red to pink. He takes several deep breaths and soon, turns on his heel and begins walking back toward the front door. You stare at him as he leaves, and see him reach in his pocket for his phone. Your breath hitches as his coat moves aside to realize his concealed carry firearm.
What you ponder for the rest of the day and never find out is that the man had reached a breaking point and was ready to take out the last of his frustrations at his children and wife and job on anyone to provoke him, and had rushed from the house in fear. He had been afraid he would take out his anger on his own children, and so had left the house, ready to take down as many frustrations with him as he could.
What you ponder for the rest of the day and never find out is that the man realizes his need for release and begins to feel better, moving his life from one end to the other reasonably happy. Your silence saved the lives of not only him, but his wife and his children. Your silence leads to more life and words than you could have imagined.
One Too Many Placemats
"Dear Santa," it started. The blank page stared up at me, meeting my eyes that would never grow. My small elbows dug into one of the three placemats from the table above, and I turned as I heard the tears in the next room, the soft droplets that no one believed I could detect. The sound bit into me, and drove me to keep writing in my shaky handwriting. I readjusted my hand around the pencil, feeling the small grooves where I bit the wood with my jagged fingers. I gripped it tightly as I wrote.
"Santa, please bring my mom some more money for Christmas." I knew that this was not half of the problems that my family had. Our family was alone again this year, with Brandon no longer around to make us laugh or cry. I laid on this stained floor, under the table, with words unknown on my lips and in my pen. I signed the paper with a backwards E in my name and pushed it away.
I stayed under the table, thinking of anything but the words I couldn't say. I tried to understand the feelings that permeated our house, and attempted to understand why I missed the presence of anyone else in the house. Suddenly, the desire for company was interrupted by an unwelcome guest. Pounding echoed through the house and I cowered, scrambling into the kitchen from my hiding spot. The sound continued until my mother's door opened. She crossed the small house, not noticing me in her attempts to wipe off her face.
She paused outside of the door, where the pounding continued. Words could barely be heard through the loud slams. When the loud squeak of the door told me it was open, the pounding stopped, but the speaking continued. The words were red. My mother's were blue. They bounced off of each other like a dance, like a fight, like oil and water, unable to mix into a harmony.
I crouched beside the refrigerator and shut my eyes. The colors continued at odds, darkening. Pounding began again until all that was left of the conflicting colors was the silence of black. I shook as the same tears that I had heard behind closed doors were on my face. When the loud squawk of the door sounded again, I dared to move.
I crawled slowly to where the piece of paper I had already signed was laying, and I ripped it up until snow drifted in bits around us. I curled up to my mother, where she was holding her head and shaking, just as I had been a few minutes ago.
She reached out for me when I touched her, holding me and telling me that everything was going to be okay. She said that my life was going to be wonderful, and she said we were going to have a good Christmas. She promised that we would get some more money in the next couple of days and that Brandon would never be by again.
But I knew that our problems were more than money or men. I was small when I lost all belief in power beyond my own, but while my body would grow, I know my eyes never would. And I knew more than anything else in that moment that even Santa could not handle the tigers which tore at our two-placemat-family.