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“I’ve always liked quiet people: You never know if they’re dancing in a daydream or if they’re carrying the weight of the world.”

— John Green, Looking for Alaska

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You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.

Jeremiah 29:13

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We finished the entire bottle that night and stayed up laughing to stories of our families until the spell of the wine had worn off and the sun peeked over the horizon to kiss us goodnight.

I awoke to the croaks of animals and hums of bees; my stomach was hot with the red wine that had been marinating in it all morning and my breath smelt of sticky bitterness. I twisted onto my side to see her blonde mop of hair. It shined a golden yellow in the sun’s beams and danced with the morning breeze.

As she was still sound asleep I stood up, swaying uneasily as the breeze broke against me. The wind was soft and pleasant, but my skeleton was frail and my muscles were weak. I made my way down the winding path that led to mounds of rocks along the water after double-checking to see that she was still asleep. I had left my shoes back on the blanket with her; pebbles and shards of Earth jabbed at the soles of my feet and between my toes-- I winced in pain but trudged on, nearing the smooth ground of land where I would be able to run the rest of the way pain-free.

My body yearned to collapse and I reached the rocks just in time to do so, catching myself with two arms and pulling my lower legs to my front where they swung over the edge and poked at the water. Remembrances and feelings erupted in my mind, the same way the marinating wine erupted from my stomach, spoiling the water at my feet.

I was looking into it-- pink water and reality.

Schools of fish squirmed to get away and I watched as remnants of last night’s tears shed from my eyelashes and formed undulating pink rings at my toes. I wondered if it was enough to kill the fish because how much contamination is too much?

My brother is dead.

I read somewhere once that water pollution kills over a million marine animals a year and I think that is pretty crazy. It makes me wonder how much pollution it took to kill Silas, but I know I will never be able to uncover that threshold.

-junicorn

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I wonder what the Sun and Moon have witnessed. I wonder if they’ve seen everything demented and cruel we’ve done. I wonder if the Moon told the Sun all the sins Tom committed in the darkness-- about all the nights of his rage and our fear.

But how could the Moon watch Tom’s oldest son bleed at the feet of the father that failed him?

Wasn’t He supposed to be his Father too?

And hadn’t He been with him when he took his final breaths?

Hadn’t He seen the way he was left abandoned, with no other option than to embrace the deadly angel with the unspooling of his blood because it was the only angel that would accept him?

His four year old brother may not have understood how horrific that night was but He understood and he understood. And neither of them did anything about it.

Are we just meant to drown?

I wonder if the Sun tells the Moon the sins Tom’s dared to commit with the lights on. Because I’ve seen the aftermaths of his fights with my mother behind closed doors, and there is no closing doors with the Sun.

Oh, what unwavering forgiveness the Sun and Moon have, showing us light even on our most sinful days.

-junicorn

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I locked myself in my room that night because my dad was drunk again. My eyes wandered to the ceiling and I stared at it until I was fully immersed into its blankness; only then was my mind able to be free from the poison of this house. I thought for a long time. I thought about how strange it is that we are always inclined to live each day as if it were our last rather than our first.

What about Jesus? Did anyone ever stop to think about the disappointment he must have felt with the world he created on his last day? Oh, how hopeless and sunken he must’ve felt when the men who were supposed to be the fruits of his labor nailed him to the cross.

The guilt we are now forced to feel as the eyes of a once hopeful but now crucified Jesus witness our confession haunts me. Had he known all along that we would cause so much pain and suffering, or was this a flaw in his making? Could that be why he left us here all alone?

And what about Eve on her first day? Oh, how I would give anything to feel just a sliver of the hope and curiosity she must’ve been electrocuted with when taking the first steps on what was then a pure and untouched Earth, before evil infected its Great Perhaps.

I thought about texting Matilda but didn’t. I laid flat on the twin bed that whined any time I moved. I blinked but didn’t break contact with the ceiling; I tried my hardest to blink in a normal rhythm. This proved to be difficult as my eyes would wince every time I heard Tom’s drunken voice echo from the kitchen-- he was on the phone with my mom again. I reached for my headphones on the table beside my bed and furiously began untangling them, desperate to drown out the rising brokenness that was now seeping through the upstairs’ floors and infecting the entire house. This blank ceiling was the closest thing I had to a heaven right now.

And now I must wade through this river of suffering until I get to the other side, I thought, breaking my rhythmic blinking and letting out the first tear of many. How could God leave me in the hands of this man? Was I just meant to drown?

I stood up from my bed, unable to hear the groaning of its metal frame through the music that was now pulsating through my ears and giving me a headache. I didn’t mind this though because I knew it was less of a headache than Tom’s voice would've given me. I went to sleep that night with my earbuds still buried in my ears and woke up with a migraine.

-junicorn

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Mahmoud Darwish, from The Adam of two Edens: Selected Poems; "The Tatar's Swallows,"

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Nikos Kazantzakis, from “Report to Greco”, tr. by P. A. Bien

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Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Violet Dickinson written c. September 1907

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Clara Janés Nadal, tr. by Carol Thickstun & Louis Burne, from "I Don't Know,"

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Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931–1934

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Bianca Stone, from What Is Otherwise Infinite: Poems; “Cutting Odette’s Fingernails”

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May Sarton, "Of Grief", Selected Poems

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