A Quiet Love

The world spins, and we spin with it. The ice on the glass frosts over like a lattice of creeping fingers, seeking the cold and fearing the sun. The ground grows hard, and the apples are gathered and stored, as the earth turns sharply to a waste of water and ice. We lie in the dirt as the wind howls above, shrieking the names of the lost to the empty skies, without a single response from the grey clouds above. Our fingers are spread over the jagged rocks as the moon rises from the water, carrying the acrid scent of burning wood, like a house of leaves, jealous of the sun, for it is far more fair than she. The cold air stings like a bustle of bees, and our breaths leave in plumes of stolen soul. The world is lonely here, and we stand on the shoulders of giants. The horizon seems so far away, but reaching out a hand, I can almost touch it. The world is quiet, and we stand in silence, watching as it all burns away.

Under the moon and the sun, two hearts beat as one.

Helpless

A friend of mine (Let's call her S) has been in a relationship with a guy for about a month now. The problem is, her mother doesn't like this guy. So S calls me.

I suspect she's calling me to talk to her mother, so I can try and reason her into liking her daughter's boyfriend. Unfortunately, I agree with the mother's stance - S went into this relationship without considering the consequences, and now she has to deal with them. she got herself in, she has to get herself out.

Halfway through the conversation, S hangs up on me. She doesn't want to hear what I have to say. So why call me?

She wants advice, so she turns to the people close to her for help, but then, when she hears something she doesn't like, she gets angry, ignores what's been said, and does what she wants anyways. So how am I supposed to help?

A Simple World

My mind has been blank for months. The thoughts that used to come so easily, flowing from mind to hand to pen to paper, are gone. I, like the drowning man, must struggle for the right words.

When did this start? When I chose to be happy - when I made the decision to walk away from the hurt and the pain. When I allowed myself to unleash my anger, instead of maintaining the facade that holds it in. I walked away from the blood spilled in the name of making the world a slightly better place, and in doing so I walked away from my muse, my inspiration.

I'm beginning to understand that tragedy is a bedfellow to motivation. We are driven not by will, but by necessity. We are pushed along by sorrow and pain, and the most famous works of our time have been written by the walking wounded. The fuel for the imagination is burned from the hearts of the depressed.

The world I once knew so intimately is now foreign to me. The sun is too bright on this side of the twilight - I much prefer the night. The jagged lines that cross the faces of the people I know are like the too-real smiles of porcelain dolls - my heart tells me they are but masks, but I can no longer tell the difference. The world I knew was fake is becoming real, while the real world of tragedy sinks behind the curtains.

They once told me that the world was a simple place. The pond is very deep; placing my foot on the ice, I see it only as a puddle.

Watch Out

My friends are everything to me. But that doesn't mean I'm going to let them walk over me. And if they do, they weren't really my friends in the first place.

Allergic to Advil

I took a bus back to my hometown Friday night, after a horrible midterm, and met my friend at the mall. After some fiascos involving pre-teens and a bag of brownies, he said he had a headache, so we went back to my place to grab some Advil. He takes two pills, watches TV for two hours, then decides to tell me he’s allergic to aspirin.

His throat starts swelling up, and his eyes are bugging out of his head, and I end up driving him to the emergency room. On the way, he had the great idea of pretending to choke and die to freak me out and I almost drove off a fucking escarpment. Then he starts making phone calls, and before I know it, a group of people are waiting back at my house to make sure everything is okay.

Then, we’re in emergency room, surrounded by people coughing and crying, and he says, “We should call people and tell them I’m dying.” See, I have a horrible, horrible taste in jokes, but I think I did a spit-take right then. Not to mention that I was cranky from the earlier midterm, paranoid from his cavalier behavior, and not looking forward to entertaining the four other guests waiting for me at home.

Eventually, we go through ten different nurses and doctors who take and retake all his information, all curious as to why he would take Advil with a known Advil allergy. I almost wept with relief when they stabbed that fucking needle into his arm and told us we could go.

At the end of the night, when we finally get out, he turns to me and says, “Well, at least this night was memorable.”

I hate it when he’s right. Then we all stayed up the whole night watching Youtube videos.