Poll in the side-bar...

*big scared eyes*

... help me?

love,
Caroline

psstt: workshop emilea's poem below.

another one

A morning of careless chatter,
Bright smiles, and knowing looks
Bring a twinge of lightness to the
Atmosphere.

A dream of striped air balloons
Billowing into the sky almost
Breaks the perception of an indifferent
Attitude.

An after thought:
Barely seeing each other would
Burden me. So perhaps your
Absence would be best.

         ...

Although:
Blundering through life
Befuddling you with rejection
Also seems rather absurd.


Do you see the pattern? i wanted to make fun of rhyming schemes...anyways. thoughts?

emilea

i really, really hope the holidays aren't like this

but i'm pesimistic currenlty. and i might have good reason to be. i don't know. i'll just see how it all works out. but until then, i wrote this. it's an experiement with prose poetry. let me know what you think (like you always do, *smile*).


It got cold way too fast. The short sweetness of he season is being blown away. Not like I would have had the opportunity to enjoy it anyway. The bustling of awkward relatives thourh gour open doors occupies thoughts, vacuums, and soapy water weeks in advance.

I made tomato soup the other day, but didn't watch and stir. It boiled over with a hiss, like forgotten family. an ovverflow of overcooked turkye and bad, sparkled sweaters comes to the front door. One can fake a smile for only so long, so soon they rush out into cold Christmas wind, and I'm left to enjoy tea in an empty kitchen, leftovers rotting in the refridgerator.

i really hope my thanksgiving is like this. i don't think it will be. and just so everyone knows, because i love to celebrate birthdays but often need reminding, my birthday is this friday. just a dropped note would be fine. i love you guys so much. miss you,

emilea

inside a leather wallet

I could have put something pathetic up here. Something...less embarrassing than all the others, and I think is actually sort of decent, if not crap. Instead I'm going with something completely different.


my fingers frantically dig through piles
and piles of old memories. There is a ticket
stub I kept from visiting my aunt, the
picture of my old best friend. Finally
my fingers grip the tired
leather of a familiar wallet.

Inside, there is a photograph, slightly
torn just below her hand, and raised from when
I wrote on the back in fury, my
pencil gouging lines into your eyes.

My trembling hands hesitate on the clasp,
suddenly unsure of how to snap it
open. When they do, there's an overwhelming
odor of rust and the scent of being
trapped in a closet for years. I can't

remember why I know the photo so well
or why, when I slip it out of it's home, that it
rests so well on my warm palm.
I think the texture has changed in seven
years, the surface a little less rough, a little
more glossy.

It's one of those professionally taken photos,
with the cloudy blue background and the cheap
smiles that cost far less than their forged copies,
the antiques that don't exist anymore.


all right then.
Heather

caroline is pathetic, you say? read for comfirmation.

At nine-thirty pm on a Friday, I close my eyes and mourn
the loss of losing sleep- the memory of a July
spent staying up to smile at the mirror, just
practicing; lucid dreams of might-have-beens;
staring down the clock at 11:10. I weep

in rememberance of distraction
I try a million ways to trick myself back into it: listen
to the same sweet song, track four on repeat;
never return Blockbuster's Pride and Predjudice.
I steal, beg and borrow glaces at the boy-next-
desk until his movements are committed to memory
timed beating of fingertips and slide of his feet.
Soon, I know him too well.

Drifting to sleep at nine-thirty-eight, I forget
my usual worries for fear of an existence spent
on half-hearted math class lust
distracted only by Mr. Darcy.

---------------------
really not sure about this.
assure me?

The Essay

 I had my fantastic English teacher review this so i don't make ridiculous errors. but tell me what you really think. what you reallyreallyreally think. not like you never do. but still. this is supposed to be giving a "flavor" of who i am, and if my voice isn't in this, or it doesn't reflect me, then i reallyreally need to know. much love everyone!

I can understand why someone would comment that we as a society are "owned by our objects". If we see a BMW and a Corvette parked in the driveway of a very large house downtown, we can generally guess what they make in a year and how many hours a week they put in. There are now entire thirty minute shows dedicated to sorting through a pack-rats collection of dust, laundry, and Elvis bobble-heads. However, I've come to learn, as I'm sure many before me have, that the smallest things mean the most. It's what seem the most insignificant that has the most meaning and the most moving stories.

I've always kept my birthday cards, ever since I was five. I would stick them into the corners of my mirror so I could see who remembered my birthday and the funny sayings. Recently, I've begun downsizing my room. I decided that my bulging drawers of clotehs and the pounds of paper and trinkets needed to be sorted through and given to people who could use them. In the process of cleaning out my bedside table, I found a birthday card. It was lavender and in a cursive script said "Happy Birthday Most Beautiful Granddaughter". I opened it up and saw that in the bottom left hand corner were the weak, barely legible signatures of my mom's parents. That was the last birthday card I received from my graundmother.

She died in March. He was in the hospital for her lungs, and she was going to be released in the next day or so. Granny was always in and out of hospitals for check-ups and a couple of procedures here and there. My family and I were never really worried that she would leave us in the near future. However, one morning my mom and dad got a call at about four in the morning, and so they rushed out of the house to Tuomey Hospital in Sumter south Carolina. A couple of hours alter, I received the call that she had passed.

It's been a strange experience, dealing with this kind of grief. As most people who have lost anyone who meanting something will tell you, it's not as simple as the five step cycle. when I started going through my things in July, I thought I had come to peace with it and moved on with my life. Granny wasn't mentioned as much, and wen she was, there was always a good story and a smile. Then I found the card in the very back of my bedside table. In the card it said "We love you, and we are so proud of what you have become, and what you are becoming." I cried.  I t was something Granny would say to me a lot. whenever I told her that I aced my math final, or that I was accepted into the Academy program, she would always tell me how proud she was.

My room is still in the process of being cleaned out. My drawers are a lot easier to pull out with far less shirts in them. My desk is neater and easier to dust every week than it has been for a long time. The fifty or so birthday card collection I had is in the recycling plant, except that card. That card is tacked above my desk, where I cansee it if I'm about to give up on studying for a test, editing a short story, or working on a research paper. "We love you, and we are so proud of what you have become, and what you are becoming."

It keeps me going.

Thoughts? I was typing this from my manuscript, so there may be some typos that aren't on the actual paper. the computer wouldn't let me copy without shutting down the internet. yes, it was annoying.

alrighty. well. happy friday everyone, and much love,
: - ) emilea

a poem inspired by the ink stains on my hands, written about the ink stains on some fictional boy's hands. (?)

these ink stains seem ancient:
close my eyes and I can see you, a thousand years ago
dipping a feather quill into an ink pot, scrawling
your every sloppy sentence and waiting for the words to dry.
You'd stare, marvel over their vulnerability

how they're not quite permanent.
You would try to be careful with them,
the edges of your fingers twitching
ready to give under the pressure of half-formed
phrases, stanzas. The lines in your head are always irresistable

in the end. Your hand would fall, leaning into wet ink
on yellow pages, and I'd watch you
write until every letter was impossibly
indecipherable to any eyes but yours.

When you handed me the pages,
though, I would smile, say
it's beautiful, because
it always is.

I know you, down to the crinkling of your eyelids,
the bend in your hair; how you're slow to smile, quick
to laugh. You close your eyes when you are angry
worried that a glimpse of your surroundings might make you snap.

You never cross out a single word when you write
and it comforts me to think
that without backspace keys or erasers,
you would stay the same.

There's a pattern of darkness here that could be
a fingerprint, if it didn't extend you your sleeves,
elbow deep. I hold your hands in mine: I could trace
these marks even with my eyes closed, till I memorize
the soft friction of ink stains over calluses, until I know
your hands by heart.


------------------------------------------------------------
um...
okay.
so, i think it gets very off-topic and that it may be confusing
and that it's kind of lame. And bad. And... um... eck. I like some lines. But I'm very very bewildered by what I have just written, my little third-first-attempt at a poem. So, tell me. What you don't like, and *hopefully* a word or two that you do.

finite.

an experiment in revealing too much

Because you guys are all awful and had to choose the one I didn't really want to put up here, here is part of a sort of essay-like thing I wrote about seeing my dad last weekend. It's definitely not finished and barely even edited in the slightest, and it was hard for me to put it up here, but I kind of want to know what you think about it. It's my first go at non-fiction, and I'm almost thinking it's what I'm sending in. It's the closest I have to a short-story. ~Heather


My stomach rolled and my eyes burned in the heat outside of the restaurant, but that couldn't be the only reason. Some credit was due to why I was there.

I kept replaying the one memory I had of him in my mind.

I was just a little thing, couldn't have been much older than two and running through his house (I couldn't call it mine, I never belonged to or with him) in a maze of white. We had covered the entire hall, living room, and bedroom with light-colored sheets and the sunlight shone trough, illuminating the world to my innocent blue eyes. Just faintly, I could hear my cousin laughing softly as she hid among the labyrinth and I tried to find her.

It was a game, you see. While he just sat there in a chair amidst the cloth walls, not telling a soul where the others hid, someone would run off and hide.

But they were always found or came out when the seeker was defeated enough to call "olly-olly-oxen free!"

He wasn't and didn't. Not for over ten years.

I could have called olly-olly-oxen free all my life if I had wanted to. Instead I just held that picture in a wallet under my mattress for nearly five years, only pulling it out if I had a bad dream and knew Amy was a sleep and wouldn't be woken by my ever-handy flashlight. Instead, I spent days forming elaborate stories of where he was and who he was with and what their names were and why he hadn't taken me. Instead, I cried every year on my birthday, wishing that I had two parents to celebrate with as opposed to just the one.

Then that call came last November and I ended up there at that restaurant, my stomach rolling and eyes burning. It took almost a full year to happen, but it did.

"I do not want to be here," my oldest sister, Natasha said.

"I don't either," Amy agreed.

They both looked at me. I shook my head and picked at my fingernails. "No."

But we were, all of us, ready to re-meet our father, or as Natasha liked to call him, the sperm-donor. When she first asked me about lunch with him, she'd said "The sperm-donor called. He wants to see us." She didn't even feel the need to pretend like she cared.

I cared, but I wasn't lying. I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to have to be there. I didn't want to have to get to know my own father.

We had invited Amy's boyfriend, Robert, along as a sort of buffer. He suggested we wait inside where it wasn't so hot. So we did. They seated us at our reserved table and arguing ensued. Amy immediately snagged the inside corner of the booth side, Robert sliding in next to her, and Natasha took the same end on the chair side. The only place for me was either by Natasha or Robert, both of which would leave me with the possibility of sitting next to him. I asked please would they sit on the other side of me and didn't they realize that I was not going to sit next to him and couldn't Natasha just handle maybe sitting across from him because it had to be better than next to him.

They said no.


P.S. Anna (where are you, Anna??????), comment on Caroline's post, just there↓

max

so... first poetry that I've written since Governor's School.
Don't expect much. It's bad. I am way out of practice, and the words are all jumbled and screwy, and... it kind of sucks. But you are to workshop it nonetheless.

inspiration: max (clearly)/his brother's speech at the funeral/observations of the general reactions of people at school.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

but the brightest flames burn out so fast
ashes stain our fingertips, blunt reminders
frantic final attempts to grasp a piece of
you, or the concept, just as both
flickered out of reach.

Your name surrounds us:
encircling thin wrists in thick
black bands, and fingers trace
three letters, over and over;

lingering in the space between lips
kindly unspoken. You thread through our minds
rivers and highways on a city roadmap.

When unavoidable, it is muted,
muttered; a statement in whispers
for one quick syllable, it carries too much
reverance, heavy, grown out of itself.

Your name is the survivor's guilt behind half-smiles
wooden paintbrushes in a flower arrangement
photographs of a yellow bass guitar.
It's a quick elbow in the ribs-look up

to see how sunlight splits open cerulean sky
and the clouds are like a halo
existing only to sheild the brightest flames.


-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

suck suck suck suck

tell me just how much.

Application Time.

So, my dad apparently is on the mailing list for Fanfare (SCGSAH monthly newsletter) and then I saw this link that said 2009-2010 application and started flipping out and made him click on it. The link did not work and I had to sit impatiently at the kitchen table until he got off. Then I went to the govie school website and looked at the glorious PDF file that looks *ta dah* exactly like the one I used last year. But still. It has like, different dates on it and stuff.

I would advise everyone to go check out the personal essay topic so we can grouse about how they could have chosen a million interesting things and instead chose something that's just...well, lame.

Also, the little environmentalist inside me says not to print out the application because you're just getting one in the mail, anyway, and that would be a huge waste of paper and ink.

SO EXCITED AND ALSO SO NERVOUS AT THE SAME TIME BECAUSE WHILE I WAS PREVIOUSLY THINKING ABOUT GETTING IN, I'M NOW THINKING ABOUT NOT GETTING IN AND HOW TRAGEDIES THAT WOULD BE...

EVERYTIME I TYPE IN CAPS LOCK,
ee cummings kills a kitten. :(

So let's get working on that lame-o essay.
-Anna

At least I got something from taking history...

Alright, this is one of those situations where I can't decide whether or not I like the poem and just need some edits or whether a massive rewrite is in order. It's a pretty early draft, but I was a little torn over it and impatient to get some feedback.

I really hate the form right now. I always do.


Taj Mahal

They say the creator of the Taj Mahal
Was found in his solitary prison cell dead

With his eyes still open, a mirror tilted so he could see
The reflection of his wife’s tomb on the water.

I find myself thinking of him as you
Pull me up by the wrists like a child, piece me

Together again like ancient shards
Of red clay pottery tugged from the desert sand.

When I move, the edges grind against each other
To remind me of the place I came from.

I think of his dear Mumtaz, who died
While giving birth to her fourteenth child, and how

My body was knit together by man and woman,
And like every creation of man it will crumble,

As the tomb they come to lay me in too will crumble,
Even if you say it is as beautiful as I am beautiful,

Even as its ivory minarets unravel toward heaven
And change color as we circle the sun.

the heavy parts

i love you caroline. : - ( i reawy reawy sowie. but i just wrote this and i'm kind of in love with it. and to be honest and it kind of reminds me of our lovely of mr. collins.

heather: comment on caroline's post and this poem please.

Untitled

It's the empty space we mourn:
the impression, the imprint.

Not a thick body folded
into a black box

or white dust sprinkled
among butterflies and waves.

It's where her breathing used to slow
on the left side

of the bed. Or perhaps,
how the phone doesn't ring at five.

It's not having fingers on a wrist
at the company ball.,

Not lungs or kidneys. We feel the absence
of the cranberry salad at Thanksgiving,

Or the empty reserved table:
two chairs staring at each other,

The cushions curved and cold,
menus untouched.

*peacefully moving on* love you!,
emilea

There will be more (much more, obviously, obviously) but this sad little paragraph is all I REALLY have (read- like) and

i like it on it's own. tell me what you think of just this and the rest will come... very soon(well, ish. I'm working on it).

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Leila spun until she fell, dancing circles in the hatchback of my father's orange Chevy. It should have hurt, but it didn't. You could tell just to glance at her, even if you weren't me and you didn't know her like the lyrics to your favorite song. Nothing hurt her. She was lying flat on her back, laughing. Her hair had more light in it than the streetlamps on the corner, and she was wearing the torn yellow tank-top she'd snuck out in and the glasses she'd taken from my face.

Leila was untouchable.

&&&

Rings

this is very long. but i'm really excited to see what you think. be honest. i don't really have to tell you that, though, do i? anyways. hope you enjoy it! -emilea


Dad doesn’t know. He and Annie left to go to my half-brother’s little league game and I went go out in the garage to the wine cooler. I popped the cork on some Merlot and sat down on the couch to flip channels. I watched Will and Grace. I eyed into the purple bottle and saw that a quarter of it was gone. I decided that was enough for one night and put the cork back in it.
During the commercial break I went to my room and rummaged through my sock drawer. I found the box of Camels and pulled out a stick, then unrolled the pair of red wool socks I got for Christmas and got the lighter. Both of those in hand, I opened the white French doors and went to the backyard. Climbing onto the trampoline, I bounced in the center for a while. I flicked the lighter and kept it at the end of the cigarette until it caught. I put the lighter next to me as I sucked. The sun tinted the yard yellow. The stringy dog across the fence was asleep in a pile of leaves. As I blew out I thought about how wonderful that smell is.

I thought about one time in science class in seventh grade they showed us how bad smoking is for you. They pumped one pig lung full of cigarette smoke and left the other lung alone. The cigarette one was black and shiny, like a leather belt. My science teacher, Mrs. Hunt, was a slender woman with hair that stuck to her head. She walked around her class barefoot and played Enya CDs while we took tests. She had two small children in the past three years. I remember her husband, Rich, would always eat lunch with her on Wednesday. He’d bring her favorite salad from Soby’s. I always thought that was really nice, that that would be the kind of man I would want to marry.

Then I thought about Annie. She was a pear-shaped red head, queen of cable knit sweaters, polished nails, and red lipstick. Her long face typically reflected her mood for the first two years I knew her, before she had Spencer. Annie wasn’t a typical stepmother. She didn’t want to replace Mom, but by the same token she didn’t want to be a mother figure. She never came to my piano recitals or my fifth grade graduation. She simply told me what chores I needed to do when I got home from school. She had Spencer two years after she and Dad got married. She photographs every moment, goes to every orientation, presentation, and little league game. She treats me like a tenant.

I closed my eyes breathing the summer air in. When I opened them I saw the red Corolla Annie bought last month roll into the driveway. Even though Annie and Dad were a couple of yards away from me, I could still see their faces. Dad’s eyebrows were almost touching where his hair line would have been, and Annie’s jaw looked slack. I dug the cigarette into my jeans and hopped off the trampoline. I dropped the rest of the stick on the ground. Hopefully, they didn’t see. Somehow I doubted that.

I ran into the house and back to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I had just gotten the gel on the brush when they both opened the door. Dad held up the bottle I must have left on the table next to the couch and the lighter I had left on the trampoline.

“You want to explain this, Heidi?” he asked. Annie looked at me with lips pursed and then looked at the bottle of wine. She scrunched her eyes and turned on a disgusted heel to their bedroom. I shuddered as the door slammed. Dad’s gaze never left me. He came into the bathroom. I backed up to the tiled wall. He set the bottle on the counter and then turned around. Soon I heard the French doors shutting in the other room.

I stood there frozen for a moment. Holy crap, I thought. I washed the gel off the tooth brush and put it back in the medicine cabinet. I walked out to the living room. I saw Dad was in the backyard, pacing. He was twiddling with the lighter, flipping it around between his fingers. His mouth moved, face getting redder by the second.

It hit me that I would be under restriction until I was eighteen. I would probably be sent to therapy again. The last time I saw Dr. Johnson was right after Mom had died. His office smelled like a mixture of Purell and a macchiato. He had a mustache that I sometimes wanted to reach across the table and yank. I would talk about Mom or people at school, and he would scribble down things on a legal pad. Then he would conjecture why I was feeling (sometimes even what I was feeling) and how I could “reign in” the emotion.

Then the thought came to me: I could just walk out. I looked back at Dad. He still paced, the lowering sun making his bald head sweat, lighter still in his hand. Annie was in the bedroom. Who would stop me? Annie wouldn’t care either way. I would be one less problem for her to deal with. Dad…well, at this point, escaping his wrath seemed like the best option.

So I made my way to my room, making a show of shutting the door so Annie would know where I was. I grabbed my backpack and started stuffing it with clothes. I made sure I got Mom’s wedding band and engagement ring. I thought about getting the wine bottle from the bathroom, but I heard the French doors close. Show time, I whispered to myself. I clicked the windows open and slid out. I had pulled the shades earlier to block sunlight, so no one could see me from inside. Everything around me was a distinct shade of blue. As the street lamps flickered on, I tried to remember how to get to Sean’s house from here. Standing there in the yard I knew I still had the option of slipping back into the bedroom window. I could just face up to my mistake and Dr. Johnson. Half of me wanted Dad to come outside and ask what I was doing. It wanted him to storm out and drag me back in. But I knew Seans’ place would be the better than here.
Sean was a guy I met in middle school. He was shady even then. The first time I saw him he was wearing a white shirt and dark, baggy jeans. He had a necklace with a ring on it. Blonde hair came below his eyebrows, his green eyes daring anyone to come up to him. I was across the gym, watching him readjust himself against the wall. Something about the way he carelessly slouched made me want to know him. We locked eyes. After a couple of seconds of staring at each other, he walked over.

Keeping his hands tucked into his arms, he introduced himself.. Someone might have thought he was cold, but the gym didn’t have any air conditioning so that was impossible. Up close he smelled like a mixture of cigarette smoke and Axe. His eyes never left mine.

I’m Heidi, I said. After that he always slouched next to me. We would sometimes talk about how much homework we had or about how crazy our teachers were. Other times we would just sit there. I liked him. There were no expectations of anything. I didn’t have to explain anything about myself or my life. We could just sit or slouch next to each other in gym, and that would be enough to call us friends. I would hang out with his group of friends on the weekends. They got me into the whole smoking and drinking thing. Sean’s Dad liked doing both, typically at the same time, and so Sean would steal some of his dad’s stuff and give it to me and some other people. I buy, he sneaks the packs to me, I smoke, we sit beside each other in gym.

“Heidi?” I heard Annie say from the front porch. “What are you doing?” I turned around and faced her. Her face was twisted into a question mark. I felt myself panic. I knew I could just run. I was faster than Annie, and she had red pumps on. But I took too long considering each option.
“Come inside. Now.” She opened the door and gestured inside. As I walked into the house she jerked the door closed. I headed for my room when she said. “Uh-uh. Get back here.” I turned around. Then I saw Dad behind her with his eyebrows raised.

“I would do what she says,” he said. I came into the living room and sat down on the couch. I took the backpack off and set it next to me. Annie sat in a wingback chair across from the couch and Dad sat on the matching ottoman next to her.

“Does that have drugs in it?” Annie asked, eyeing the back pack. Her arms were folded, red nails drumming her arms.

“I never did drugs, Annie,” I said. “Not like you would care anyway,” I muttered under my breath.

“What?” she asked. “Heidi, I’ve always cared about you.”

“Uh-huh, sure,” I said picking at the beige, shag carpet.

“Heidi! "

“Leave it alone Annie,” Dad said putting his hand on her leg. “Heidi, you don’t have any ice to skate on. I would watch it if I were you.” I looked at him. “Now. Could you please explain why we found the Merlot next to the couch with a quarter of it gone? And why the other bottles are missing some wine?” I shrugged, struggling to come up with a lie to make it all okay. I looked back down at the floor.

“Heidi!” He shouted. “ANSWERS. NOW.” I felt like someone had slapped me across the face.
“I just had some now and again,” I said quickly.

“It looks like you had more than ‘some’, Heidi. Most of the bottles are half empty already. And where did you get cigarettes and lighter from?” I breathed in. I didn’t want to rat Sean out. No telling what he would do to get back at me.

“It’s not that big of a deal, Dad,” I said, trying to be calm. “It’s just a couple of-“

“Not a big deal? It’s a huge deal Heidi!” Annie interjected. “You’re fifteen. You should be worrying about if your shoes match your outfit, or if those shorts make you look like a boy,” she paused, as if to emphasize that my shorts did. “You shouldn’t be puffing and drinking your hardly started life away.”

I could feel my lip curl as I tried to restrain the explosions that were occurring inside me.“You wouldn’t care if I did anyway. You just care because Dad does.”

“You know that isn’t true, Heidi.”

“Oh? And how do I know that, Annie? You have never once tried to understand me or my life. You haven’t tried to care about me, Annie. And you know it.”

“That is enough,” Dad said. He was using a low tone of voice, which meant he was really, really mad. “Heidi, apologize to Annie right now.”

“No. She doesn’t deserve an apology.” He raised one eyebrow.

“Heidi, what do you think your mother would say?” Annie asked.

“You don’t know my mother!” I screamed.

“Heidi!, that is en-"

“Do you know what she was going to do with Mom’s rings?” I asked. I could hear my voice getting louder, feel my face getting warmer.

“What? Heidi-" Annie started.

“She was going to sell them off. Pawn them. So she could buy Spencer a new baseball bat and club and some other stupid baseball stuff."

“Heidi, stop it.” Dad said.

“I’m not lying! I heard her on the phone. She was talking to some Diane woman,” I said, gesturing toward Annie, as if Diane was standing next to her. “She was going to give them to Diane to pawn off, and that they would split half of the profits. She said that you wouldn’t mind, because Cassie had already passed on.” I felt tears start to bubble up. “She felt creepy having those rings around the house, like Cassie was still around, watching her or something.” He looked at Annie who was the color of ash. Her eyes were huge. Dad’s face fell.

“Heidi. Go to your room.”

“Dad, I’m –"

“Just go.” I stood up, grabbed my backpack, and walked down the hall. I closed my door and sat down on the green carpet. I rummaged through my backpack and found the rings. They were on a simple silver necklace that used to hold a monogrammed locket before I lost it. I put them on. They were cool and smooth. The diamond on the engagement ring fractured the overhead light into pale shades of pink and green. “I love, I hope” was the inscription on the inside of the marriage ring.

One time when I was really small I took the rings off of the bathroom counter while she was showering. I put them on and went outside to the trampoline. I looked at them on my finger. They were too big for me. I could put two fingers through the holes, but I remember thinking how beautiful they were. Silver studded with emerald, white gold with a square diamond on top. Mom came out panicked, convinced that I had lost or eaten them. When she saw that I was wearing them she laughed.

“Sorry, honey, but only one of us can be married to Daddy,” she said.

I never got to visit her in the hospital. Dad would hire a babysitter to get me from school and they would stay with me until Dad got home. He typically had an Oreo with me before putting me to bed. The next morning we would have cereal together and then he would drop me off at Paris Elementary. One morning I asked him where Mommy was, and when she was going to come home. His adam’s apple rose up his neck like mercury in a thermometer.

“I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said. His eyes were wet and soon he went to his room. I got to Mrs. Ward’s class late that day.

The day Mom died he gave me the necklace with her rings on it. He said that I couldn’t wear it to school, only on special occasions. I was wearing the necklace the day he and Annie got married. Dad didn’t mind so much, thought it was good of me. Something about uniting past and future. Annie, however, looked like a squeezed lemon whenever she looked at the necklace. I wanted Mom to be as much apart of their marriage as she is apart of me. Annie wanted to start over. Annie still wanted to start over.

I was in my room working on homework that afternoon when Annie was on the phone with Diane. The way she talked…the way she said Mom’s name. It was as if she knew her. I wanted to come out of my room and shout that she didn’t know my mother, and to stop acting like she did. That she was never going to put her lacquered, filed nails on those rings. But she would have just laughed at me and taken the rings anyway. Then it would be my word against Annie, and although that had never happened before, I didn’t want to imagine the outcome.

There was a knock on my door. I said come in. Dad opened the door and then shut it behind him. He sat down on the floor next to me, watching me twirl the rings around my finger. I set them next to me.

“You’re grounded. Until Christmas,” he said. “You have to come to Spencer’s ball games, and you aren’t to leave the stands. You’re going to meet with Dr. Johnson three times a week. Whatever he recommends, therapy groups, medicine, whatever…you’re going to do it, understand?” I nodded. “I – we- are really disappointed in you, Heidi. We thought you were more grown up than this. We thought we could trust you, that you would make wiser decisions.” I nodded again.

“What about the rings?” I asked.

“You’ll keep them,” he replied, picking up the rings. He sounded tired.

“Did you and Annie have a fight?” I asked.

“We had a discussion.”

“Ah,” I said. “ Where’s Spencer?”

“He’s spending the night with one of his teammates.” I nodded. I watched his fingers trace over each ring, over the stones and then his finger traced the inside of the rings, over the inscription. “Heidi, take care of these rings.” He put them on my finger. I thought back to the pictures of their wedding, the ones that were in scrapbooks under the guest bed. The ones Annie thought Dad had thrown out.

prose piece thing whatever

Okay, guys. This is just an...opening scene of something. I'm not sure what. It's just prose of some sort, and I like it.

It was inspired by the music we listened to in Julia's class. (man I miss prompts):

"What are you making me listen to?" I ask, pulling on the cord of his iPod headphones and dragging it over the bed.

"What do you mean? This is spectacular stuff right here."

I shake my head. The screen says it's some a cappella group. Somehow, I'm not understanding where he gets off in saying this is spectacular. "Chris, this isn't even music. This is a bunch of guys saying 'do' over and over again on different notes."

It's his turn to shake his head. "This is music. These guys that are saying, as you put it, 'do' over and over again? They are amazing artists. You have to appreciate their work and talent. It's got to be hard to--"

"No. I can't. Change the song or I'm leaving. I'll go downstairs and play with your little brother," I warn. He acquiesces, afraid that I'd actually go downstairs and play with his little brother, something I'd never do. His four-year-old brother always seems to have something sticky on his hands and snot running out of his nose. I don't like children. And I know that most people would say "But you were a child just a few years ago" or "Why? You're a child yourself" but I don't care. I can't handle little kids. They're whiny and loud. Sticky, too.

The new song isn't much better. It's Dolly Parton. I mean, I love Dolly as much as any other American, but her music...not so much. It's ridiculous. I tell him this just as Dolly starts belting about some girl's clothes and how they could stop traffic.

Chris turns to me, mouth falling open. He's always over gesticulating, just like a cartoon character. "You can't be serious. I understand about the other song, some people don't like a cappella groups, but Dolly? She's a classy lady."

"...Who need to wear less makeup and find a new profession. Change it."

Once again, he does. This is our routine. He plays any one of his 2301 songs, picking out specific ones that he thinks I might like. I usually don't. He's made a playlist for me, but so far I've hated--okay, disliked--everything. Or at least decided that cows shouldn't be allowed to record songs when they're in pain.

Don't get me wrong, I love music. I'm way into the Killers and a few other bands, but not the stuff that he usually listens to. Chris has always liked obscure bands and crazy music. He actually has a whole collection of different tribal songs from around the world--about twenty or thirty. And then he has the 'Sounds of Silence' CD that is entirely made up of crickets chirping, refrigerators humming, and water dripping. He loves that album; I can't explain why.

He's never looking for music, but he's always finding it. At least once a week he comes straight to me when he gets to school with a grin on his face. "I found something new," he'll say, holding out one of his 7 CD cases or his iPod, sometimes even an old cassette tape he's pilfered from his fathers basement closet. All he has to play those on is a terrible radio with crackly speakers, but he says this gives the song even more charm.

Right now, all I'm hearing is the click, click, click of him scrolling through the thousands of songs. It's kind of musical in itself. Finding music in everything that isn't music is a little habit I picked up from Chris a couple years back when we were sitting on his roof listening to traffic. It doesn't mean it's always good music, but it's rhythmic nonetheless.

He's stopped clicking but I don't hear anything. "What--?"

"Just wait, it's a slow start," he says.

Gradually, like waiting for a new year, I hear something start up in the background. It's not even an instrument, from what I can tell, just something synthesized, electric. It makes a great sound, though, a kind of whooshing noise. As it builds, a guy's voice kicks in. He repeats the same lines over and over, with a few variations each time.

“Hey, I kind of maybe like this one,” I say.

His eyes widen. He's making cartoon faces again. "Seriously?" he asks. "Like, seriously seriously?"

"Only kind of," I say, not wanting to give him the satisfaction.

He jumps up and starts dancing on his bed. He's screaming and the ear bud falls out of his ear.

"Chris. Chris! You can't stop jumping now, you're going to knock me off," I say, grabbing hold of the comforter.

"This is the most exciting thing to happen all year. No lie. Really exciting."

He goes to the dry-erase board hanging on the wall and writes down the song title. He's only got four up there already, and then two bands. He calls it the Lane List, a list of all the songs I've liked that he's put on my playlist, and the bands that he's made me CDs of, on which I've loved or liked almost every song.

"It is not the most exciting thing to happen all year."

"Yes. It is," he says, nodding vigorously, his head almost looks like it's going to fall off. "This could alter the entire playlist." His tone is serious, low.

Okay, so now I'm curious.


Ready.
Set.
Workshop!

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