lovelyworldesk

[lovelyworldesk]

Teddy Bear

Somewhere, hidden deep within the confines of my mother’s closet

resides a bear

An old, rather ratty bear

with its button eyes all scratched and it’s black and white fur barely even there

When I was young, I asked her if I could hold the bear

And she said,

“Gently, now,

it is much, much older than you

and its bones don’t heal like yours do.”

I didn’t understand (regardless of never understanding much anyway),

why it sat alone on its ornate mahogany pedestal

which oddly felt more like a chopping block to me

and why my mother never played with it

if she wanted to keep it so badly.

Perhaps she kept too many wishes pinned to its back

and she wanted them to come true

so, she’d leave it to its own bidding.

More likely she wanted to keep a piece of herself alive

one she had laid to rest long ago

prematurely, possibly.

All things said and done, my mother placed the poor creature back on its shelf

lamenting, “I used to love this as a child. It was my favorite thing.”

She touched its fur like it was a statue made of dust

and I learned that day.

[lovelyworldesk]

Heat

The heat of the blacktop

Burning, smells of tar and sickness

The heat of the oven

swelters, for your words never hit so hard

I cannot stand the heat you’ve created

You’ve made the house smell like rot

There’s no escaping, there’s no hiding

only waiting, only dying

Please,

the smell

moldy bones and burnt apricot.

[lovelyworldesk]

Cinnamon

The sharp smell of spice and contradiction

Sweetness may well have blinded me to this old house

It was supposed to be a brickhouse bakery, sugar dashing the floor

not violence

its essence forced upon me

like a punch in the nose

 Sitting on that porch step

staring at the light of the sun

I wished for something more than this

something that would come

someday

Had you known all along about where my heart would ache?

 No, no

For when it mattered

that glimmering brown candle became the kitchen floor

coffee-rubbed hardwood

something I could sink into

An ocean whose waters never bend

spiraling down,

down,

down,

the sea bottom made of cold bedsheets

and chocolate chip cookies.

[lovelyworldesk]

reblog if you:

are a writer

post primarily things about writing/your stories/ocs/etc.

are fairly active

[lovelyworldesk]

An Exception

This is a short story I wrote last year that won a Gold Key in the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards in my region. I hope you enjoy.

A doleful scene sat in front of him- or, what he thought was a doleful scene. Gnarled trees and darkness shrouded the sky above him to the point where he couldn’t tell where he was. Ghastly shadows of a phantom light spider-webbed across the ground without any real source. The air smelled of rotting leaves and icy cold. He was glad he couldn’t feel it.

Those details didn’t matter, however. The part of this scene that made it seem truly dismal was the shaking hand that emerged from the darkness, holding a knife.

This was not an unfamiliar sight for the man. Countless nights had been spent by him lingering in the corners of run-down warehouses and the depths of the darkest forests at night- places where a film of haze fell upon the world, intoxicating those inside of it with the fear of what they knew not. The man himself knew not how he got to these places. When it first started happening to him, he had been standing amongst the itchy sweaters and jazzy music of a Christmas party. One moment, he had been trying his best to ignore the drunken iterations of his uncle, and the next- this.

For a while, he believe the pattern that determined what place he’d be sent to was whatever place was the darkest and most dreary. This, however, was inaccurate. This was proved to him when he found himself in the sunlit hallway of a hospital instead of the comfort of his own bed, where he had been moments before. That same feeling- the unknown fear- hung in that place as well, despite its light interior.

He had grown to know that fear. He was not a stranger to it. He had a purpose in these situations, within this fear; a purpose that was possibly more hated than that of the person wielding the blade or lying in the hospital bed.  His dream-like trips were always fleeting;  he could remember only was what imprinted itself into his senses. The burn of antiseptic from the hospital still stung his nose because of it.

This time, however, it was not the scene that was unfamiliar to him, but the person behind the weapon that surprised him. The hand in which the knife was held was slight and unsteady. It was connected to a little girl. Her face was as fragile as her hand, with dark eyes cutting into the pale angles of her face in such a way that reminded him of himself. She had a look upon her that reminded him of a feral cat- un-trusting, but laced with thin, precarious lines of melancholy. With his curiosity piqued, he watched the events unfold in front of him.

The girl had been pointing her knife and a small, sickly looking squirrel who had gotten its leg stuck between two tree branches. The man found it ironic that the little girl trembled and whimpered at the prospect of harming this creature, but the squirrel,  who was moments away from its own death, had not a clue. It simply tried to free itself without much regard to the other being nearby.

Life isn’t so afraid of death when it closes it’s eyes and ignored its presence.

He gazed at the scene, patiently waiting for it to be finished. The girl had not seen him, and she wouldn’t once this was all over. He was silent and elusive- he would complete his job and move on. Maybe next he’d get to visit somewhere nicer, like the warm interior of a retirement home. Those were his favorite. A certain type of peace pervaded the air of those places. They were places that were so soaked in the acceptance of the old that one couldn’t help but feel at ease.

He could already tell what memory he was going to take away from this one. The sound of the girls footsteps crunching the dry ground below them wavered the silence that had been there a moment before. Perhaps he’d store the memory of that sound away, and think of it a later time. It had the same tranquility of a crackling fire.

“Hello?”

The voice startled him from his thoughts. The girl was staring eerily in his direction, though not necessarily at him; her eyes were focused on a point just beyond him.

“Go away. I’m warning you,” she bit, which was a comedic demand to hear for a girl with such a high-pitched voice. Still, it…..unsettled him. He had always been somewhat invisible to others when he was forced on these little cosmic trips. What was different about this girl?

“Can’t you see I’m busy? I’m busy!” she insisted, and the way she stepped towards the man told him that she was most definitely talking to him. He carefully put his hands up, crouching so he was eye-level with the child.

“Alright- I’m going to stay right here. Don’t worry one bit. Continue on,” the man replied softly. He did not recognize his own voice. It was skewed in a crackly, echoing way that he had never heard before.

The girl hesitated, but then nodded her head vigorously and turned back to the entrapped squirrel

She took a step forward. Her breathing was labored and unsure. The man watched on intently.

She took another step. Her knees clacked together with the cold night air that had seeped into her bones, adding yet another jarring sound effect to the silence.

She took one more step, this one seeming much more hesitant than the last. She was close enough that she could get the squirrel in one swipe of her knife.

The man waited. He figured it was her nerves, but it’d happen. She’d win in this fight with the squirrel.

Alas, he was not correct. The girl abruptly dropped her weapon and came bounding towards the man, her face now wrapped in that melancholy that he had seen only faintly in the girl's eyes moment before. She buried herself into the folds of the black drapes he had on for clothing, wrapping him in a hug- as best she could, anyway, with her small arms.

“Help me,” she whispered, no louder than the sound of a breath. If he didn’t know better, he would have thought she had said nothing at all.

But he did.

He didn’t move his arms to embrace her back. He didn’t shift his weight to accompany hers- he didn’t even breathe. He simply looked at her, for what seemed like an eternity.

When he did move, however, it was to pick up the child.

“I told you not to worry,” he replied simply, before starting to walk away, the girl now relaxed and curled into his arms.

Death had never been a kind man, but….he decided that maybe, just this once, he could be.

[lovelyworldesk]

An open letter following a short life

Love cannot be measured

by hours in the day, nor the baying

of a wistful song

But rather, the length of an open field

and how long you wished

Of running beside me

If my teeth and my claws

were meant for iniquity

Remove my weapons,

strip me of a loathsome fate, for I cannot imagine a day

in which they were not used for good

 How long have we rejoiced together?

How many nights have you laughed or sang

and I tried

Oh, I tried,

to sing along with you?

If nothing else, something so whole could warm these old bones

How I wish they weren’t old

 You never touched anyone so delicately or so strong

as when you touched me on that woven wonder of a quilted blanket

and I heaved with such heavy breaths,

Why hadn’t I seen this before?

You cried

Oh, you cried,

when I could not continue on with you

for paws were never meant dance

longer than they needed to

 Didn’t God tell you?

You’re supposed to tend these gardens alone, my dear,

my body always and only meant to pack down your dirt paths

so you could go on.

No word ever spoken, no hand ever held;

that’s okay.

Whether you ran or sunk

in that open field

I couldn’t help but love

your utterance of my name

[lovelyworldesk]

Welcome to my new blog, everyone!

Hello! My name is Cami and I am a writer of mainly poetry and fiction stories, though I like to branch out whenever I can. This is going to be my blog to share some of my works with you out there and get the joy of writing into all of our bones! If you'd like to come along, feel free to follow.