The Snow Angel

It was a blizzard. One of those March flurries that cover over everything, muting the echoes and muffling the shadows.

We were sitting in the cafeteria, while the sevies sat in the gym and got yelled at for something. I would have joined them if it weren't for the snow. There are these big windows covering one wall of the lunchroom, where you can look out at the back of the school where there should be obnoxious little kids playing, but was, on this particular day, eerily empty. Turned-over tables edged with white, magpies cutting through the quiet.

Eerie.

It was eerie.

I was sitting at this table, lunchless as usual, picking away at somebody's celery or apple or whatever they didn't want. This kid kept opening the door to the outside so the wind and snow would blow in and piss everybody off. But other than that it was really quite warm. Snug. Stacked so close together on the benches it was like sardines in a can of strangers.

Then the kid at the door got yelled at and he sat down and we all settled into a warm, hungry peace, watching the snow fall down.

I spend most of my time looking out of windows, especially when I'm with the rest of my grade. It seems lonelier when I am where I'm supposed to be. I say a lot to fill the silence but when I run out of words, the sadness settles inside me like sugar in diluted water, and I find myself looking out the windows. For what exactly, I can't say.

It was then that he came.

He came out of the blizzard like a snow angel: this spot of dark hair and raincoat, hands in pockets, blowing steam into the air. Starting off small, unnoticed. Growing closer and realer and larger and more and more like some kind of forest spirit, coming to bear a message to the earthlings.

Shaking the snow out of his hair with his fingers, brushing it out under his collar, whipping the flurries back into the storm. It was like this snow angel descending from the mountain tops. And he was headed for the door.

I was staring. The table group noticed, and turned around.
"It seems to be that we have a snow angel," I said.

Then the door opened.

A burst of cold was what went noticed first. Then the heads of the eighth grade turned, and gaped, in quiet, prideful awe.

The door closed.

Still shaking the last snowflakes from his coat, he smiled at his audience. There was silence. A single girl stood then, from her center spot at her center table, and she smiled back. We realized then that she was his.

The girls glared at her. The boys glared at him. "Taken," they whispered dejectedly.

The principal noticed him then. Not that the boy looked all that older than the rest of us, not any taller, or more mature; he just stood like an angel is all. Like a god among mortals. He came from high school.

I glared at him for a different reason. The principal walked over to the boy, and the two talked, with what looked like defence and reason, eventually allowing him to stay, after acknowledging that his school had let out early. The eyes of the school stayed locked on him. His snow was melting in the fingers of his gloves.

I glared because I didn't like the way they were looking at him.
As if a year can mean so much.
And yet that's almost how they looked at me, the little guys. Looked at me, not like they were looking at something otherworldly, not like an angel made from snow. They looked at me as if they were looking straight at the future - looking it dead in the eye. Some regard it with fear, others with fascination. Very few regard it as a person. Only one becomes its friend.

He walked with respect. With knowledge of beauty and wonder and love. Emerging from the silence of a snowstorm with the arrogance of a prince.

A snow angel. An absolute snow angel.

The girl held his hand and laughed her laugh of power and they sat together. The cafeteria went back to eating. I wondered for a moment why anyone would leave their own kind and walk so far through so much just to join the ranks of what he used to be. For what? A girl? A girl probably behind considerably compared to the girls belonging to his own? What joy could he possibly find here which lacked in the place in which he came from?

Why couldn't he have stayed where he belonged?

It's not like anyone could enjoy that kind of company.



No one I could think of, at least.

The Greatest Accomplishment

So basically this is the greatest thing I have ever made.

And I've gotten medals before for stuff that was not nearly as exciting as this. I think I deserve an extremely shiny medal for making this thing.

It took me like three hours and I made it out of an old pocket calendar that wasn't actually that old because it still held the future (which I apparently don't need as much as this) and some string and a button I found in my piggy bank that isn't actually a piggy because it is a tree monster instead.

It's kind of like a gun holster only when you open it for a quick draw instead you find...

A STAPLE REMOVER! Much more useful.

I didn't want you to see my hand but I mean I'm just really proud of this, and I would have worn gloves or something if I was hard-core anonymous, but if I wore gloves then everyone would think I'm A, and I'm not A, I just find Jenna to be a relatable character, I'M SORRY I RELATE TO THE CREEPY EVIL BLIND GIRL WITH THE WEIRD HANDS!

We are all friends here. So you can see my hand.

I'd show you my whole arm.

Also, sorry about the double-jointed thumb, if that's the kind of thing that creeps you out.

So yeah I just thought you ought to know about this amazing thing I did. I guess this is the part where I say something meaningful about life or perspective or humanity or whatever, but I mean, I don't need to say anything meaningful anymore. I have already found fulfillment out of life from making this staple remover holder.

*walks off into the sunset*

A Single Piece of Beauty

So I was wearing this Budweiser shirt.

It's the kind that kind of hugs you at the bottom hem, so when you're walking, and you take a step, the one side kind of bunches a little while the other side kind of stretches a little, and then they change when you take another step.

Which I guess is a single piece of beauty in puberty.

It's funny, 'cause I walked there nearly every day last summer, and then hadn't seen it in over a year. This one piece of community this guy started a couple years ago.

I think the thing that impressed us most was that he really tried, you know? I mean, this isn't the kind of place where people try, believe me. They don't buy garden gnomes, or trim their trees, or get fancy rugs or any of that. We are not entrepreneurs. But this guy was.

Not only did he get this street-art mural done on the side of the store, and fix the cracks in the parking lot, he put out tables and chairs in the front. With umbrellas. And it wasn't because he had something to prove or anything. They were office chairs from thrift stores, situated at random next to the soggy dog bed by the door for the skinny German Shepherd everyone learned to call Roxy.

I guess it kind of just blew us away, you know? This meat market, produce store, candy shop kind of place where all the labels were in Spanish. And there'd be a pig head in one corner and popsicles in the other. And people would sit outside and park their horses and talk with the shop owner.

And he remembered me.

I kind of thought he wouldn't; so many people, you know. But I set down the strawberry soda at the counter and said "Hey," and he looked up and lifted his eyebrows and said,

"You've gotten tall in the past year,"

which is all anyone has ever greeted me with. I had almost thought I'd stopped growing for a while. The words came as a familiar comfort though, and the reassuring constant of change calmed me in the reality that nothing has changed.

There's very little beauty where I live. It comes in small pieces, and is usually gone unseen by the general public. And the ugliness wears on us, it does, and we forget about places outside the town, places where the flowers grow. The pieces of beauty the world was born with get buried along the busy roads.

But history cannot be buried.

A small, city-cut line ran under the street, fenced off from the broken bits of sidewalk alongside it. No one touched the line of stream and grass. It was rectangular, cement-floored, rock-sided. The water moved slowly, and the grass grew unmolested. Backyards touched either side, giving it about ten feet either way, lining it with fences of wood and wire.

I hopped the fence into the untouched territory.

Hopping the fence meant to touch a second of beauty - one small second, which the city hides away. You have to keep walking to reach it. Little hidden pieces, way back behind abandoned playgrounds and trees that used to be weeds.

I kept walking. Walking past yard after yard and barking dog after barking dog, until the water was just a paper-thin trickle against the concrete and the rocks started to look familiar. I thought of Lafflin. How he couldn't climb the rocks. I had to hold his shoes for him.

Eventually the line ended in a neighborhood I'd never seen before. Just a side street no one bothered to explore. I climbed over the other fence, and suddenly recognised that the city used to be beautiful. Which explained the old broken-down barn houses. The farmland built over. The old wire fences. The horses which still stubornly walk down the streets, like ghosts from a different time.

The water led to a marshy, city-owned property of red-winged blackbirds and cattails. The sky was stormy and the sun was going down, and the birds sat discussing the weather. Weeds grew along the fence, beautiful weeds, glorious weeds, and the second of fenced-off beauty slowly spread through the past, over the little hills and ravines which had been painted over through civilization.

And the single piece of beauty was a scar left imprinted on a world which held only ugliness. It was a memory of when all things were beautiful, and when no fences hid it away. When growth was left to change, and was thereby kept from changing.

We must fight for beauty, these days. Fight to find something invisible.

But us searchers sure do appreciate when we find it.

Judge A Book

The field is usually empty, except for an occasional Mexican Cowboy riding his horse and living the dream. Which is partly why I stared when I noticed the heads of several very much horseless boys sitting somewhere in the grass.

I also stared because my glasses are scratched and therefore I cannot quite see properly, but my main reason for staring was because one of the boys was standing, watching me, and he looked like a sevie I used to know.

Then he started staring.
So I kept staring.
Then he started walking towards me.
So I kept walking.
Then he stopped.
So I stopped.

"You got a cigarette by any chance?"

His voice was much, much older than twelve. We stood a good fifty feet of wild grasses apart, kind of sideways, still staring.

I noticed the two cards in my hand. They were playing cards, and I had found them in the dirt on my way over. One carried three hearts. The other held a king.

"No, just a couple of cards."
"What?"
"Just a couple of cards." I gestured, regretting my attempt at a joke as soon as I said it loud enough.
"Oh. Well, just thought I'd ask."
"Okay."
"Don't have too much fun."
"I will."

And I did.

A Thought on Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a pink dress shirt and a tie with squares on it, a mug half full of crunchy coffee. Tired, shimmery brown eyes reflecting the sun coming through the attic window. One really messy eyebrow. "He will bless you, bro. Bro. He will bless you."

People think forgiving is supposed to mean that what happened was okay. That's because, when someone bumps into you, steps on your foot, and they say, "I'm sorry," you say, "It's okay." Even though, sometimes, it's not. Most of the times, it's not.

When someone apologizes, they expect to be forgiven, and by forgiving, we say things like "it's okay" to get them to leave. But forgiving doesn't mean it's okay. They're two very different things. And people are starting to forget that.

They're always saying to "forgive and forget." And the thing is, forgiving doesn't mean you have to forget. Sometimes you want to. Sometimes you can't. But you can remember, and still forgive.

Forgiveness isn't saying nothing happened. It did happen. And it was wrong. It was awfully wrong. And you think of it every day. And it haunts you. And it taunts you. And it eats away at all of you like a parasite until the words "I'm sorry" mean nothing more than another unemployed clown, another stray dog in winter.

"I'm sorry."

Sorry doesn't mean it's over. Sorry doesn't mean they understand what they did. Sorry doesn't mean they'd take it back, or do it differently. And sometimes a sorry never even comes.

Sorry means forgive.

It's hard though. Harder than saying sorry. And all forgiveness is is letting go. Sliding past. Smiling. It doesn't mean it's okay. It doesn't mean sorry is enough. It doesn't mean what happened won't happen again, and it doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt.

It just means you're tired, and done, and ready to move on.

Sometimes you're just stuck. Stuck between what happened and what will. Stuck between hate and resentment, fear and anger. And it builds, it builds with every stray thought that fleetingly passes through your mind, until it fills your lungs, it fills your heart, you can't breath it hurts so bad, and it gets bigger than you, the hate, it gets so big your scrawny ribcage can't bare it, and your mind is a cage of unheard voices, and they're angry, the voices, and you can't let them out and they scream, they're screaming for freedom, for justice, and justice doesn't come.



Instead,

Forgiveness comes.

It comes as silently as it had left.

It floats in through the window like a songbird. Like a spot of sunlight through the leaves. It comes like a hero, a lifeboat in the water, cutting through the waves before you're drowned. It raises you up. It holds your hand.

A bird.

It flaps its wings above your head, around the floorboards, like a moth looking for the moon. It pauses clumsily over your head. It sits on your shoulders. It leans on your neck. It unlocks the bars and you're free.

You're free from yourself.


Forgiveness doesn't mean it's okay. It doesn't mean you're giving up, and it doesn't mean you lost. It doesn't mean you were wrong, or they were right, or that what happened didn't matter. Or that it didn't hurt, and still doesn't.

It's just a decision. A decision to choose to see beauty in the monster.

It means you're free, and you freed yourself.

And it hurts a lot less that way.

No Touching

DISCLAIMER: THIS POST WILL GET CREEPY.  AGAIN.  THERE IS NO MAYBE.  IT WILL DEFINITELY GET WEIRD. JUST SAYING.

I don't know when I became a don't-touch-me kind of person.

I mean I remember being a little kid and holding my mom's hand across the street, and I remember taking naps with my sister, but after that it gets kind of fuzzy.

It's not something you notice right away. You feel normal. Like you're no different. But then someone taps you on the shoulder, and they can see you flinch, even though you can't feel yourself doing it.

You find your natural posture to be that of a losing man in a boxing ring right before the bell rings: fists at your sides, elbows in, feet apart. Scared. And you know what? People notice. They don't touch you. People don't touch you if your hands are constant fists.

It's then that you notice. You realize how you get this sick, confused feeling whenever you have to tap someone to get their attention, whenever you have to shake hands.

And then there's the hug - looming over you, coming closer, arms outspread, gaining, gaining, and right before you meet them, you close your eyes and everything goes fuzzy and you lose a sense of consciousness for that small second. Sometimes you slip up. Your head goes up too far, down too far, your arm gets caught in the space under the arm and above the shoulder. Your foot stutters, you pick the wrong side. So many things go wrong with hugging. So many things.

Touching is a normal human tendency. It's healthy, physically and emotionally. It lets you know you're not alone. Which is why I'm starting to worry that maybe I have a problem and need to get this figured out.

It isn't that it hurts, being touched. I researched this stuff. It's called tactile defensiveness. That's when you don't like people touching you because it feels painful or uncomfortable or emotionally overbearing. But the thing is, people with this thing are usually okay touching people themselves, when they want to and when they're in control of the touching.

But I don't know how to touch people. And the truth is, I really do want to. Which is a weird thing to say, I know, but I do. I want to touch people. Everybody does, jeez. It's only human. I just have trouble turning feeling into touch. Here, I'll set up a list.

Most people naturally turn friendliness into hand-shaking, and anger into punching, and love into hugging, and so forth. They don't have to think about it, it's just what they do. But touching is so hard for me. When I really, really feel like touching someone, there's so much anxiety and emotion and confusion it always turns out wrong.

Like, sometimes I'll love someone so much I'll just-

They've gotten used to it, I think. They're starting to catch on. After the unexpected action follows a silence and a look and an acknowledgement of what was meant to be a hug. Nothing needs to be explained.

And that's what's so scary about touching.

When you're sitting a good distance apart, turning words out of your mouths and so forth, you can say whatever you want to. You can hide your feelings, with words. It's easy. All you have to do is say 'I hate you' and twist your face around right, and no one will know it's not true.

But with touching, there's electricity involved. You're cutting a current, a neuron path from one body to the next, and it's like you can feel their own heart beating with yours, and you know what they're feeling, you know what they're thinking. You know because you can feel them. 

You can feel them feeling.

It doesn't matter how you're touched - hand to hand, fist to stomach, knee to elbow - they know what you're doing. They can match the right emotion with the wrong action. They know that punch was meant to be a hug, they know what you're feeling, they know what you're not, and you can't hide. And I hate when I can't hide. 

Most of the time.

Most of the time.

Some of the times, I don't. Just some of the times.

But the thing about never being touched is, after so long, it gets to be dangerous. A fear of touch built up over time results in turning you into an erratically made twitching time bomb, sitting alone on a bench. A body starved of unspoken feeling gets sensitive, it gets jumpy. It forgets what to do. One time I got patted on the head and started crying. 

So, please don't touch me. It may go wrong. It usually goes wrong. I don't like being touched because touching means hurting. In Native American culture, the closer a soldier came to his enemy, the braver he proved to be. If he got close enough to touch his enemy, to tap him on the shoulder, or leg or something, he was known as a brave man.

If you're close enough to touch a body you're close enough to hurt a body, and maybe that's reason enough to squirm away. Maybe I hate people touching me because I don't want them to know what I feel, or because I don't like to get hurt. 

Or maybe it's just because intimacy frightens the living hell out of me.

Please take the sign off my back. Please, I'm begging you. That sticky-note that's supposed to say 'Kick me' says 'NO TOUCHING', and it hangs off my neck like a protest sign. What am I supposed to change the sign to now? 'NO TOUCHING'? 'I DON'T REALLY LIKE TOUCHING BUT PLEASE I'M ONLY HUMAN'? 'DON'T TAKE THIS THE WRONG WAY BUT I MEAN EVERY ONCE IN AWHILE COULD WE SKIP THE HIGH FIVE AND HOLD IT FOR A SECOND EVEN THOUGH I FLINCH BECAUSE I DON'T TRUST PEOPLE?'

It's a difficult situation.

I'm doing a very brave thing, saying this. You could use it against me. All suddenly become unapologetically huggy, and touchy. Asking me to play hand games and crap.

Defensive measures will be taken. 

There will be blood.

I'm not yet sure what has been concluded from all this. Do I really not like to be touched? 

Do I not like to be touched by certain people? Definitely. Can I at times be inappropriate in touching certain people? Definitely.

Should I have typed that sentence? No.

I guess, in the end, I'm just another tree monster, and the forest is a lonely place. We surround ourselves with branches so the outside can't come in, while the inside's just an empty spot waiting for a hand to hold. It's a hollow kind of place. It hurts to touch and it hurts not to, and I think, when it comes right down to it, we just don't want to heal anyways.