Behind These Hazel Eyes

I sat on the floor with my school lunch. I pondered it silently.

I don't really want to eat this, I thought, procrastinating that first fatal bite.

I was pulled partially from my thoughts when I vaguely recognized a voice. It pricked its way delicately through the clouded walls of my mind. I grew attentive to it; subconsciously I turned to the source.

And there he stood, his eyes reaching out to me through his current conversation. The world dropped for the two of us as our eyes met. His were opened, pleading, sending me a message only mine could read. "Why did you go?" They asked me, "Please come back. I miss you." They insisted. "I really cared for you." And perhaps I saw for but a moment, "I love you."

I turned away, again without conscious thought, hoping one of these days his eyes will take the time to read mine; they tell him, as they have for quite some time now, that I'm not believing his anymore.

What can I say? What can I do to make you love me?

I lay in bed at night and think. And there's one theme that's been drifting me to sleep since Friday. I roll to my side and press the soft blanket against my cheek and smile. This "idea" is so pleasing to me because I know it's not all in my head. I know these day-dreams and fantasies aren't the extent of happiness I'll feel.

Because I'm not dreaming, under this lime green quilt; I'm remembering. And I adore it.

But I haven't grown up. No, no I haven't. I thought I'd learned from past experiences that this is how it works; not this, this . But I can't do it. I can't.

I'm caught up in him, everything about him; and what kills me the most is I saw it today. I saw it returned. I saw in his eyes what must be in mine. And, Heaven help me, I nearly ignored it. He stood there,waiting for me to speak, and I sat there, waiting desperately to do so. I kept looking to those around me, willing them within my heart to say something to him; he needs someone to say something! It never occurred to me that I could speak. It never occurred to me that I could start this conversation we both craved. This conversation we both awkwardly lingered around.

But I couldn't do it. I couldn't.

And he left.

And it hit me slowly, like I was laying in the road and someone gently backed their car over me: with each step he took the farther under I went, until I found myself unable to breath.

What did I just do?

I've spent my life hanging in my heart for a specific boy to look my way. I've gone through a line of them, yes, it hasn't been the same boy all this time; but I've reacted in the same manner each and every time.

I "love" him. He tries to be friends, as all good boys do. I assume he feels the same way I do. I do nothing to win over his heart: I don't flirt, I don't joke, I want that relationship; and he wants it too right? So why wont he act?

The next step leads to the boy pulling out of my life. And I hardly, if never, end up speaking to them again.

And this one time it was different. It is different; Oh, let me slip into death this very night if it's all past-tense. Let this game still play! -I was choking on his departure, not because he was going away from me, across the room; but because, at that moment, I knew he saw no reason not to go away from this forever. If he feels, in his heart, somewhere, the way I do now, and he doesn't feel I feel it... Why would he stay?

Why should he stay?

I'm caving in upon myself, and have been since about eleven o'clock. I can't let him go so simply. I don't even know what it is about him, what it could possibly be that the mere thought of it leaving is crushing me so much. I need this day to end and tomorrow to begin. I need to find him and talk like today never happened. Find him and say the millions of things that should have been said the moment before he turned away.

This relationship can't just be cute, silent faces from across the room. And it's my fault that, as of now, that's all it has been.

Oh please, please don't give up on me yet! My coldness is a lapse in judgement, a lapse in consciousness. I'm sorry if I hurt you. I'm sorry if you read my stupidity as lack of interest; how could it possibly be? You see the way I look at you. It's like your Ora is the Earth, and my attention is the moon, and try as I might I just can't pull away from you. Believe me, I've tried. And I've failed horribly. And if you'll just let me climb over this self-imposed stumbling block, I'm sure neither of us will ever have to pull away. I don't ever want to. And I want you to know. So I smile at what you say and do, even when it's not funny.

It's because it's coming from you that I smile.

Please keep smiling back.

A Poem a Day...

I think my research assignment is getting to me. This keeps running through my head, so now I shall curse you in the manner I have been cursed. If you would, please direct your attention to Langston Hughes:


What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?


This made me remember the Onion poem. Please don't ask me how. Or why.



"Song to Onions" Ray Blount, Jr.


They improve everything, pork chops to soup,
And not only that but each onion's a group.

Peel back the skin, delve into tissue
And see how an onion has been blessed with an issue.

Every layer produces an ovum:
You think you've got three then you find you've got fovum.

Onion on on-
Ion on onion the run,
Each but the smallest one some onion's mother:
And onion comprises a half-dozen other.

In sum then an onion you could say is less
Than the sum of its parts.
But then I like things that more are than profess-
In food and in the arts.

Things pungent, not tony.
I'll take Damon Runyon
Over Antonioni-
Who if an i wanders becoms Anti-onion.
I'm anti-baloney.

Although a boloney sandwich would
Right now, with onions, be right good.

And so would sliced onions,
Cewed with cheese.
Or onions chopped and sprinkled
Over black-eyed peas:

Black-eyed,
grey-gravied,
absorbent of essences,
eaton on New Year's Eve
peas.




How this man was published, I'll never know. But I commend every moment of it.

Springtime; a Ring a Ding a Dingtime. Birds sing-ing. Sweet lovers love... The Spring!

The trouble with the rearranging of the room is the mess that follows. Because, naturally, I couldn't just move my bed, bookcase, dresser, desk, and the like without having to purge the closet of unneeded clothes and stuble upon many a random object which my inner PackRat is utterly unwilling to toss.

Junior year has been a change for me. I became myself over the course of this year. Though, yes, I've always been myself, but I think I reached that destination to the fullest extent this year. So far.

I no longer stay in my shell until I warm up to people; I'm perfectly content, now, being my bizarre, obseen self right off the bat. People probably wish I wasn't. But I am.

Not to mentoin I'm pretty now. Not saying that to fall back into my recently escaped Bifu land, but truthfully, looking at pictures of me just last year, I've blossomed.

Thank you orthodonist.

And nature.

So naturally I must attend to my surroundings and dispell all those things that keep me linked to the me of the past. She was a good, lovely, spunky little gal, but her term is up. It's time to remember her in pictures and humorous journal entries; not every corner of my room.

So, oddly, I am able to admit I've caught the spring cleaning bug.

And perhaps that's part of this newfound me. Perhaps, and I'm not carving this in stone, perhaps I like to clean.

Or perhaps I like adventure.

And that pile of miscellaneous is my grandest adventure to date.

Today's Atmosphere: Cloud Nine

I like Pop Tarts.


This is how I feel about them:


I fear-Darling
The machine ate the tape.
I fear-sweet thing,
That the hour's growing late.
You hold the door-forever,
And I'm forever away.
But your door's not mine;
Oh, your door's not mine.

I have gone-too far
Into my own head.
And now I'm-stuck hard
'Cuz I can't get enough of it;
Enough of you-this time,
Though this time just won't quit
A minute hand.
The longest minute hand.


And I don't want to swim
At the speed of light
If you're stuck where you are.
And I don't want to race
With gods and angels alike
If you're just a distant star.
Darling, I know
It-is-strange
For me to love
You-this-way,
But there's something that you've just got to know:
Life ends-where you end.
Love goes-where you go.


I look-with longing
At what's not too far away.
And I know-what's coming;
What will change and what must stay.
Kill this pointless space-between us,
Or it will be the death of me.
Suffocated air.
Just suffocated air.


And I don't want to swim
At the speed of light
If you'r stuck where you are.
And I don't want to race
With gods and angels alike
If you're just a distant star.
Darling, I know
It-is-strange
For me to love
You-this-way,
But there's something that you've just got to know:
Life ends-where you end.
Love goes-where you go.


And it seems to me-to be simpler
When it flows across-the room.
My heart couldn't be much emptier,
Knowing it's not part of-you.
These gaps aren't made to stay there,
But they aren't filling too.
Let me slit my throat and lie-down.
Let this blood
Bleed me through...


'Cuz I don't want to swim
At the speed of light
If you're stuck where you are.
And I don't want to race
With gods and angels alike
If you're just a distant star.
Darling, I know
It-is-strange
For me to love
You-this-way,
But there's something that you've just got to know:
Life ends-where you end.
Love goes-where you go.


Baby this life-will end;
And this heart will beat.
And this blood will flow
Red, through the streets.
It will stain your shoes,
And bleed right through
To the core;

Please know I couldn't love this more.


The best part of swimming
At the speed of light
Is getting where you are.
And I'd race
With gods and angels alike
If I could win one blessed star.
Darling, I know
It-is-strange
For me to love
You-this-way,
But there's something I'm surprised you don't know:
Life ends-where you end.
Love goes-as far as you go.


I'll go
Wherever you-go.



May our toasters all be working, and may our Pop Tarts be well worth the wait.
-Erica

Pardon My Rambling

Today's mood: Frustraited.


I'm frustraited with him, with myself, with this homework, with the setting sun, with etc etc etc...

I have this twinge inside me, this nagging pinch that's driving me mad. What does it want? What doesn't it want? It wants him to be with me, it wants me to have never fallen behind in homework, but mostly it wants to create.

I have books and ideas that flow through my head, I have characters and places and stories to be read. But I just cannont write them, the words just don't come; and I'm stuck in this limbo with a pie on my thumb. I can't eat, I can't sleep because I'm too incomplete. And I need to record this, not just for me, but for them. For the world, for all those in it, so they too may drown the sorrow with an ounce of benefit.

I want to punch something. I don't know what it is. Perhaps I'll take a walk. I need to do something. This pent-up frustration is driving me mad.

What You See's Not What You Get

[Author's note: I originally attempted to write this in my short-story notebook, but I hit too many distractions and it wasn't as even as I'd hoped. Here I shall attempt to rewrite it the way it should have been written to begin with.]

I brush my bangs back, unaware the mirror I'm looking in isn't the crystal reflection I've seen my life through.

The faded, smoky, jewel-encrusted mirror shows eyes of a goddess, the most fabulous blond hair, and a smile that could blow a hole straight through a mountain.

"Who wouldn't want you?" I ask myself with a smile.

I turn from the mirror.

This place isn't my bathroom. I've somehow come to stand in a large, endless room with vaulted ceilings littered with dangling decorations. The room is sepia and foggy. The lights are dim; vague, orange smudges sporadically glowing along the walls.

I stop in minor awe. This place is lovely. I begin to wonder how I came to be here, when I notice the masses of people hidden in the dark. They smile at me and beacon me come. There are smiles and compliments and glistening, gorgeous eyes...

And I want to be one of them. They float along with perfection, and their alluring smiles cause me to crave that same perfection. I look in the jeweled mirror and sense I'm nearly there. With a face like this I should be accepted in immediately.

But all the while, a feeling burns in the back of my being. It's uncomfortable and leads me to fidget, but with each approving smile it escalates. I take this adrenaline for happiness and continue on my way.

With each word I speak and each word returned I feel that rush. This must be what acceptance feels like, what confidence feels like. This must be what I've been missing.

I dress before the bejeweled mirror each day. I paint my face to perfection. How is this shirt? Does it hug my curves? How do I look from the side?

And they smile at me with their porcelain eyes, and this feeling grows higher. But with it grows the crave for more. I'm not one of them yet; I must do all I can to make it so.

I'm leaving my old friends behind. In between the alluring smiles and flashy compliments I miss them. I see them down there, outside this window. But this feeling within me won't allow me to visit. If I leave this place, all I've worked for is gone.

I can't have that.

But I'm still nudged with discomfort, though I'm positively unsure why.

I lay there in bed, growing anxious for the coming day. I know what I'm wearing and how I'll do my hair. I can't wait to hear their remarks! I can't wait to see their smiles! I...

Something hits me. A freight train of knowledge collides with my brain.

I slip from under the covers, barefoot, to the ground. I make my way to the window and peer outside. It's dark from here. All I can see is the distant, distant ground below. Looking out, there is no horizon; no mountains, no trees.

"It's just a stormy night." I tell myself. Nonetheless, I lean farther out, examining the blackened fog.

Something small chips from the cement windowsill beneath my fingers and drops slowly to the ground outside. I watch it land to the dirt at the base of the building.

But the base...

I recoil back in shock. I run to the jeweled mirror, willing it not to be so. But it is. The mirror is black, and all but a few jewels have crumbled from the frame.

I reach a reluctant hand out and rub away at the black.

My eyes are dark and quiet, lined and painted in a desperate attempt to bring the life and light back to them. My hair is greasy and frayed and coming undone.

I don't try smiling.

They watch me as I gather my things and wrap them in my jacket. That strange twinge within me finally feels at peace.

"Why are you leaving?" One asks as I head slowly for the door.

I turn back and explain.

"The Devil is sly, but his vanity is slyer."

I looked in car windows and smiled at myself. It's nice to know you're pretty, it's a great confidence booster when you're having an off day. But I looked one too many times. I commented on myself one too many times.

And with each glance, with each compliment I gave myself, I became more and more consumed by the great and spacious building. It was so subtle and minor that I didn't even realize it was there. I don't remember looking longingly over, I don't remember timidly climbing the stairs, I don't remember pressing open the door.

It was all in the looking glass. Day by day it grew blacker and blacker, jeweled only to keep the appeal. I continued to look, and it continued to change.

I gave up the place I'd held before for something newer and, for the moment, better. I'd finally found my lot in life.

"You look pretty today, Erica."

The compliment was answered with a, "Thanks!"

But it somehow became an implied, "I know."

I must keep my eyes open, and keep aware of my surroundings. I must ensure the mirror won't lead me back there. Because, after all, it wasn't much of a choice. You don't choose to enter the great and spacious building.

It enters you.

It becomes you.

It controls you.

I will no longer be a slave to the world, I will no longer look pleasingly at the secular things.


I smile to my goddess's eyes as I brush through my hair.

"Pretty as always." I smile.

I use my finger to buff away the black, smoky smudge slowly encroaching the glass.