And so I spun in layers

of skin and linen sheets

heavy sighs 

and winter rain 

my hair a mess

telling stories 

of last nights dream 

The

fault line

deep and wide

spreading day by day

between my two blue eyes

a present reminder of historic quakes

and the ever impending aftershocks

if past lessons taught

I will reinforce

the structure

within.

Everyone loves her when she smiles

but when she falls

to fragments of hell

and the world

moves too fast for her own taste

Is when you'll find

the essence

of the very shivers

that makes her embrace

the world ever so softly

with her voice quivering

between lines

of heavy roars

"I embrace melancholy

To be able to breathe

Because all that's lost shall be found

and I cling to this promise of a new day

wandering halls of darkness

searching for light

between masses of deaf ears

and broken promises

Embracing my sun

that will always raise

with its promise

of a new day"

(This is the first chapter of my novel in the works, Ugly Beauty)

Mirrors. Sierra hated them. Every time she looked into one, she was reminded of what she wasn't. And that was pretty.

     Of course, her parents assured her that she was beautiful. And at one time, Sierra had been naive enough to believe them. But on her first trip to Siris, the huge metropolis they lived on the outskirts of, she realized that she was what they called Flawed.

     And she also found out why they didn't live in Siris. After all, only the richest and the prettiest could live in Siris. 

     And those two words--rich and pretty--didn't describe her family even if you used your imagination.

     With a sigh, Sierra let the tiny gilded mirror fall from her hands to the rocks below. There was a tinkling noise as it broke, and she regretted what she'd done. But only for a moment.

     She shielded her eyes as she glanced at the sun. It was time to go home. Much like a monkey, she scampered down four or five branches and then leaped to the rocks below. 

     "Ow!" she yelped in surprise, as a shard of glass from the mirror embedded itself in the calloused underside of her foot. Hopping around on one foot, she carefully squeezed out the tiny sliver and wiped away the blood.

     She stared at it for a moment, long suppressed feelings bubbling up again. "Yeah, I bleed everything time I look in a mirror," she muttered angrily, tossing the piece away and limping home.

     Sometimes, as she walked, she imagined that she was beautiful and rich, and living in Siris. And she had a boyfriend. But Sierra was too old for that, now, and her hopes of becoming beautiful when she hit her teenage years had shriveled up and died. So had the dreams of living in Siris before Governor Sharon. It was she who had made the first push to "cleanse" the city from "undesirables" such as Sierra's own self. Fifty years had passed since then, and Governor Sharon's goals had been carried out by her successors, Governor Lyron and Governor Petrie. 

     Upon reaching the small, two-story house that she knew as home, she paused to watch the sunset before pushing open the weathered front door and entering into the dim interior.

     "Hello, honey," her mother called from the stove. The greeting was cautious, testing to see what Sierra's mood would be today.

     "It's getting cooler, so that's nice," Sierra responded, heading for the stairs.

     "Yes, that is," her mother agreed. She didn't press for any more conversation, recognizing that her daughter needed some additional time to think things through.

     Sierra's mother wasn't plain, but she wasn't beautiful, either. However, something about the golden-red hair, blue eyes, and the graceful, proud way she carried herself often turned heads. Perhaps she would even have found a place for herself in Siris if she hadn't have fallen in love with a young man, who was both poor and flawed by a huge scar on the left side of his face.

      Sierra wished she'd gotten her mother's elegance and grace, but she hadn't. She'd gotten the same reddish gold hair, only perhaps more red than gold, and her eyes were sky blue. Her skin was pale with freckles, and something about her face was just...plain.

      It was of these things that Sierra thought as she stared out her window. Rheal, her best--and only--friend, had told her to quit thinking about her looks and try and help her parents out.

     "Stop daydreaming, wishing you were beautiful because you're not. And you've got to come to grips with that," Rheal had broken out, at last, a little harshly. "I used to be beautiful until my face was burned in that big fire in Siris. If anyone has a right to complain, it's me, losing everything I knew. But you don't see me leaving at dawn to wallow in self-pity while my parents and siblings do all the work."

     Sierra hadn't really talked to Rheal after that. She knew that he was right, and she didn't want to admit it.

     "Time for dinner!" Keagan, her little brother, hollered up the stairs.

     Sierra started from her thoughts, then collected herself. Turning away from the window, she hurried down the stairs to the dinner table.

     There wasn't much talk. Her father was bone-tired from whatever it was he did at the power plant, and her younger brother was too busy stuffing his face with food to talk. Her mother, ever sensitive to Sierra's moods, just let her have her quiet.

     Sierra gathered the supper dishes and washed them while her parents talked quietly in their bedroom. Maybe about her? She considered eavesdropping but pushed the thought quickly away. What was the point?

     After washing the dishes and drying them, she lingered by the family room to watch her brother play. It was one of the rare moments in Sierra's life when she actually felt happy, watching his youthful innocence, as well as his curiosity at work, crafting impossible stories for his toys to play out. She actually smiled a little as she watched the giraffe and the ant fly to the moon to discover the charm that would make everyone beautiful.

     I wish, she grinned, shaking her head.

     Keagan, sensing her eyes on him, looked at her. "Do you want to play?"

     He asked the question so often, and Sierra had said "no" so many times, she wondered if he would ever ask it again. But he had.

     For a moment, she considered actually playing with him. But then she remembered that she was sixteen. This was a world she'd been shoved out of a while ago. Now it was like she was between two worlds--the world of her childhood and the world of her adulthood. And it was like neither wanted her.

     "Not tonight, buddy. I'm a little tired," she responded, smiling at him. "But maybe tomorrow."

     Keagan considered her for a moment, then smiled wider. "Okay!"

     She lingered in the shadows, watching him return to his ridiculous fantasies, and then turned to the stairs and the haven of her bedroom.

     Emotionally drained, she stiffly lay down on the bed, her sun-browned arms spread wide across the clean sheets. Gradually, as the moon rose in the sky, and her eyelids closed, her fingers worked their way beneath her pillow and closed around the small mirror she kept there.

     For someone who hates mirrors, I sure have a lot of them, she thought wryly to herself.

     The other part of her brain responded It's because you keep hoping that one day you'll look in that mirror and see a different face.

     If only.

Title:Ugly Beauty

Author: Abigail Burchwell

Word Count of Excerpt: 1,105

Genre: YA/Fiction

Age Range: 14-18

Synopsis of Ugly Beauty: Sierra Rosenberg only wants one thing: she wants to be beautiful. After all, your face and your money are what gets you a place in Siris. Unfortunately, she has neither of those. She must learn to come to grips with her reality and learn that looks aren't everything, and ultimately, what true beauty really is.

Why I Believe This Project Holds Potential: Nowadays, a lot of emphases is placed on what you look like and how much stuff you have instead of who you are. A lot of teens are struggling to meet people's expectations of perfection and are left feeling inferior and worthless because they simply can't. It's important for every person to realize that their attitude and their personality is what makes them beautiful, just as Sierra does.

Education: Homeschooled/Private Tutor

Platform: Self-published on Amazon

Website: https://shadoweliteallies.wixsite.com/shadow-elite

Preferred Genre: Science Fiction/ YA

Age-Range: 14-18

Previously Published Works/Experience: The Motto Trilogy Book One: Together We Fight

Article in the Clarion Mirror

Three-year course in creative writing

Currently taking a year-long course in crafting short stories and novels

Likes: Outdoors, running, dog training, writing, swimming, hanging out with friends

Hobbies: Running, writing, drawing, and doing things with paracord

Bio: I've been writing since I was seven, and I haven't stopped since. I've only self-published one book, however, to "test the waters". I come from a large family consisting of four older brothers, a younger sister, a dog, and a snapping turtle. It can be hectic at times, but it's usually pretty fun, and never cease to give me encouragement, inspiration, and criticism!

Hometown: I was born in Hagerstown Maryland, but my family moved to North Carolina when I was three. I have recently moved to Pennsylvania. 

I wanna give you my eyes

and unsteady neurons

every shiver of my torn heart

a speck of my soul

split into atoms up on atoms

fragments of pieces and dust

- So you can soak into beautiful memories

Until my heart caves and I cease to exist

Because I've lived a thousand lives

and died in a million of breaths

and in the end was nothing more

Then a will to create...

A thousand shards of beauty

for all these magnificent lives

That I could never once live

only touch and breathe and kiss

in lonelier nights than this. 

I can’t quite tell

If there are parts of me missing

Or extra bits stuffed in the cracks and crevices

It feels somehow like the boys who kissed my skin

Nibbled a little too much off the edges

Leaving sharp corners exposed

But maybe they plucked those thorns from their own sides

And pasted them- no. Plunged them

Into the soft spaces when I wasn’t looking

Or maybe- just maybe when we kissed

They took me between their lips like chewing gum

And spit me out just a little mangled but still all there

Well, mostly there

The substance anyways

Gum loses its sweetness in the chewing

But I suppose I should be grateful he never swallowed me whole

I still remember the bright, light blue letters plastered on that old orange juice advertisement: “A day without orange juice is a day without sunshine." I guess that’s why losing my father will always remind me of citrus. He made me fresh orange juice in the morning before taking us all to church every Sunday. Thinking of him tastes like lemon zest that tightens your jaw and makes your teeth cramp. He helped me plant orange-lemon hybrids in our backyard. The first time we tasted one, I cringed. He will always feel like the rinds peeled off of me that left white residue and dried tang on your fingertips. To me, his death is that familiar sticky coating that lingers on your fingers even after you wash your hands. After digging your nails into the bright orange rinds and causing a little juice to spray out, it leaves a thin layer that makes my peeled body seem slightly more protected from the outside world. It separates me and brings me comfort.

I still wear my father’s old jackets even though I know it will sting being covered in his old lining. My mother said it was gross of me to keep some of his clothing, like it was the skin shed from a snake: lived-in. But I like zipping up a layer of him and feeling myself settle into a person who had experienced more life than I. It makes me feel like I can just absorb some of his knowledge; some of him. Maybe he can still help his little girl learn to take on the world, like he used to. Maybe I just want to feel something. Even if it’s pain.

The day he died, my mother was sitting on my bed at 7:35 in the morning. We were going to Disneyland to celebrate my little brother’s birthday a week early and my mother’s birthday a day early. My brother, Aron, was turning nine. She received a call from the hospital he had been in for the past year and half; we thought that maybe he felt a bit better and it would be him on the other end of the phone. My mother and I were victims of hope. Hope is my least favorite word and I am totally its bitch. It makes sure that you will never accept your reality like a knife capable of slicing skin and making juice trickle out. I felt like a tangerine, subjected to the thin blade of longing and dribbling out at the seams.

My mom put the phone call on speaker as the man on the other end relayed to us that this morning my father’s lungs had finally forgotten how to breathe and that his heart had learned to stop beating. That man introduced me to loss: a loss of a past filled with rides at Disneyland and churros on Sunday. And a loss of watching the special tree grow in the front yard and plucking off the ripe oranges. I learned two things that day:

1. Birth smells of citrus spraying out of the freshly peeled orange whose rinds are still pushed underneath your nail beds. An unparalleled attachment between me and my mother was born that day.

2. Death is when you squeeze the pith out. My father died.

The only good thing about knowing you have ALS is that you know that it will kill you. What you must learn is that it will also kill you slowly. I guess I was relieved that he no longer had to struggle to breathe. I found comfort in knowing that his muscles were no longer furiously disobeying him and bruising him from the inside out. It was August 7th, the day before my mother’s birthday. I skipped breakfast that day.

I rode in the passenger seat of the car with red heart-shaped sunglasses covering my damp eyes. On my phone, I searched “amyotrophic laterals sclerosis, death.” The ALS association website was the first to pop up. The link was already purple from me clicking on it so many times before; I had poked at it so often that the website developed the texture of an overly ripe Valencia orange that fell heavily off of the tree with a thump and gushed out just a little bit. My father did the same thing until his plump body flattened on the dirt soil and all his juice drained out, slowly.

This website explains that ALS is a neurodegenerative disease that literally translates to “No muscle nourishment.” Without nourishment, the muscles degenerate, which leads to the loss of voluntary actions. Voluntary actions include: putting his arms around me, posing for a family photo, and making us breakfast in the morning. It meant he could no longer go to Disneyland with us, sit in the white boats of “It’s a Small World,” and sing that incessant tune over and over again until it grinded my nerves. Who knew that I would ever miss that.

“Don’t let your brother know yet, I don’t wan to ruin his birthday.” Ok mom, I won’t.

We both wore sunglasses while she drove in silence. Today was a celebration.

Nothing reminds me more of my father than Disneyland. He loved that place so much none of my older siblings can even stand to hear the theme song anymore. It still held wonder for my younger brother and I, though. We used to go almost once a month and my father always made us all go on “It’s a Small World” at some point in the day. I always dreaded that. I wanted to go on all the fun and exciting rides, like “Thunder Mountain” or “Indiana Jones,” and I hoped that he forgot or might let us skip it. But he insisted that it was one of the most beautiful creations in this “small world,” apparently there was “an inexplicable presence there.” I always thought the secret “presence” was long, drawn out boredom and I would try to put it off till late in the night so I could nap on my father’s cushiony bicep. Only I ever saw him cry a little underneath the Mexican dancers when the tune started being sung in Spanish. I don’t think he ever suspected that I opened my eyes and saw him weep for his home country and his own deceased father. I kept it my little secret.

On the day he died I rode it twice. My unknowing brother complained while Mom and I cried. Now every time I sit in those white little boats and go through the castle to the unchanging tune of “It’s a Small World,” I can’t help but feel the presence of my father as if I’m 8 years old and he’s buying me pink cotton candy. I feel him put his arm around me and call me his little princess again. The time passes so slowly, and I love it.

It makes me want orange juice for breakfast again.

I ran away

To find myself

and I found

I missed

the pieces

I left back at home

once upon a time

a very handsome king

made a wish for

the most beautiful rose

in the whole kingdom.

overhearing his wish, servants readied-

this castle's courtyard was known

for the dazzling flowers it held.

nothing was too exotic

or too rare for the servants to grow.

dutifully and smartly

his servants sowed the seeds

and watered the grass

and tilled the dirt

but nothing grew.

late in the night

on an evening walk

the king saw a sprout,

withering alone.

the servants had given up.

the king knelt to the flower

and thought sadly to himself,

'those servants, kind hearted...

but don't they know?

by rose, i mean a love to queen.'

then suddenly,

the rose began to grow

bigger and bigger

until it was the size of he!

the petals opened

and the king was astonished

to find the sleeping form

of the most beautiful girl

he'd ever seen.

waking her gently,

he was immediately smitten

by her blue eyes

and her songlike voice

and named her rose.

and she too, fell for him

the moment she took his hand

and saw the look of delight

that spread across his face-

as she fell into his arms.

And under the stars

surrounded by flowers and lanternlight

a rose and a king came together

and from the first touch of hands

nothing was impossible anymore.

- honesty

- comfy - too big - sweaters

- people who are shy until you find that one thing that causes their eyes to light up!

- joy

- rain; thought to elaborate but, rain.

- finishing work before I've had time to check the time

- toe curling pleasure

- socks; thought to elaborate but, SOCKS

- sincerity

- well written music

- Kisses

- EXTRA large mugs - the larger the better ;)

- People who ENJOY food.

- paint - could also read "making beautiful messes" but, paint.

- animals

- insects, bugs, arachnids and all such creatures really except for scorpions

- realizing that the two points before this could've just been "life" and then leaving them because I'm feisty.

- genuine hugs

- orgasmically amazing pens. I KNOW you concur.

- Prose

- freshly cleaned, new sheets

- people who smile back sincerely as you pass them by

- you, dear reader

- books and everything that they encompass

- books that have been previously owned

- blueberries, freshly rinsed. Actually, any fruit freshly rinsed.

- big people, little people, all people

I have found that love is not hard to find.

Try it. @Mel - tag, you're it.

(Not trying to put you on the spot but you're amazing and that's my only defense)

If you've read this and it brought a smile, a thought of a smile or even a faint memory of what it is like to smile, I urge you to make a list like this of your own in whatever format, style or length is natural to you. Tag me!