untitled-- 2

So, I didn’t win any awards. I didn’t expect to, so it’s okay. I got a pin shaped like a softball for being on the team, and it’s shiny, so that’s nice. The rain feels like tears today. Sometimes, it feels like knives, other times it feels like kisses, and other times it feels like little cotton balls. But today, it feels like tears. I don’t know why. It just does. It feels like someone keeled over up there and just can’t stop themselves. I wonder what caused them to do so. They haven’t stopped crying for the last two days. I know I get a massive headache if I cry for too long, but sometimes it’s even worse when I don’t cry, when I hold it in. Roth says I do that. That I hold tears in. He and I have been dating for over two years now. He has chocolate eyes and silk hair and giraffe legs. In a good way. He’s tall, thin...no, not thin, he’s skinny. I don’t want to be like the sky.
I’m in my room now, where I do a lot of thinking and a lot of not talking. Unless I am talking. Usually I’m not talking to anyone though. If Theo, my dog, is in here with me, I can say I’m talking to him and people don’t worry as much. Apparently it’s okay to talk to a pet, even if it’s basically the same as talking to nothing and no one. But no, that’s not entirely true...Theo feels things. He has emotions, as all animals do, as all living things do, and some non-living things. Like the step I apologized to for stepping on earlier.
My room has not changed much since I was ten. There are horses running across my bed, around the borders of my walls, and on the rug. They run across the dresser and the desk, the posters and the sweater in the closet. They run across my heart, my chest, my dry, color-shifting eyes, trampling me with their hooves, their memories of all the times I became the sky in this room. They run and run and run like tears, like the sky, like me. I run. I’m always running.
I fall back onto my horse-trampled bed. I wish Roth was here. He’s good at distracting thoughts with other random thoughts. He’s good at everything. Well...no, that’s not true, but I feel like he’s good at everything. He feels that he’s good at nothing. He doesn’t see what I see. Even before we met, seven years ago, he’s always been bad at seeing himself the way he ought to. I blame his father. I don’t like his father. I don’t want to talk about his father.
My desk might be my favorite part of my room. Remette, my typewriter, sits front and center, with books and papers and ideas stacked on either side. Glass bottles that I’ve saved hold paintbrushes, pens, pencils, markers, quills, and potential. The lamp that was my great-grandmother’s still works and brings all to light, and works by tapping it with a finger. No switch--you just tap it anywhere, and it turns on, and has four different brightnesses, depending on how many times you tap it. It fascinates me how it works, mainly because I don’t know. I drew the conclusion long ago that it’s a magic lamp. Upon said conclusion I also concluded that it nor anything inside of it grants wishes.
On the number of shelves above my desk there are many stamps, sealing wax and imprints, return address labels, a book on calligraphy, empty sketchbooks and notebooks(only college ruled), my piggy bank, several horse, unicorn, and dragon figurines, and more books. Oh, and a couple of trophies to show that I accomplished something.
How long have I stared at the white ceiling? I don’t know. I lose track of time easily. I can’t tell if it’s pure white, or if it’s eggshell or off-white or some other kind of white. It’s blank, except for the smudges where I got something stuck up there. I think it was a gooey thing shaped like a skull and crossbones.
“Hey,” Haley walks in, “Did anyone important get an award?” She’s leaning against the doorframe with her phone in her hand. She’s tall, with long blonde hair and perfect blue eyes.
“I don’t know, are the team captains important?” I ask, not expecting a response. She shrugs. I continue. “The captains each got two awards: one for being a captain, the other because the coach likes them.” She nods.
“Yeah, they did the same thing for cheer.” She pauses, strolls into my room and looks at herself in the mirror. “You’re not walking to school on Thursday are you?”
“I am.”
“Seriously?” She’s not happy with my answer, but she’s not fighting it yet either. I’m her ride to school in the morning.
“Yep.”
“Did you ask Mom?”
“I’ve talked to her before.” I’ve never actually walked to the school--It’s a ten, fifteen minute car drive, but I’ve always wanted to walk it once.
“Like, today?”
“No, but I have before. I want to do it just once.” I haven’t taken my eyes off the ceiling. It’s hard for me to talk to her sometimes. Probably because she keeps all the words from me. Her real words never pass through her lips to me, but they have to countless others. All the world knows Haley but me.
“Fine…” With that, she leaves, all her real words trapped behind her lovely, straight, white teeth. I think they are pure white. She’s too beautiful for them be anything other than pure white. I wish she was as pure as her teeth are white. I close my eyes. I can’t think about that. No, closed eyes don’t help. I open them again and sit up on the edge of the bed and unclench my hands from the blanket. Ow. Sometimes I don’t realize I do that. It hurts when you do it for a time, and then release. Ow.
sister, I
wish that you
could understand
that because of you
my head is the sky
and an innocent
blanket
has hurt my hands.
I scratch on the back of the program for the awards ceremony with a dull pencil. It’s almost ten o’clock, and I haven’t done anything for French. I should do that.
Paper is discovered in the top desk drawer, fed into Remette, and adjusted to the first line. My notebook with the rough draft is propped up against a book about the history of unicorns, and I begin.
It’s a letter to my future self. In French, of course. Madame G, ma prof, is going to send them to us five years from now, which is pretty daunting. Five years is a long time. I was going to say some really deep stuff, and ask some pretty deep questions and stuff like that, but Madame has to read it first and make sure we did it right, plus I sort of freaked out and panicked trying to think of what I would ask myself five years from now, so I just followed Madame’s checklist and didn’t write anything more than what she asked us to. It’s easier that way. No heads becoming the sky.
It’s still raining, and it’s still cold. My phone buzzes. It’s Roth.
--Hey love
--Hey
--How’s it going love
--Im writing a book.
--Cool, what about?
--No, no, I’m only writing it in my head. I can’t write it for real.
--Why not?
--People would freak out.
--Would I freak out?
--Probably. But since you can’t read it you won’t. Promise?
--Promise what?
--That you won’t freak out.
--Since I won’t be reading it, I guess I won’t. I promise
--Good. Now if you were here I would make you pinky promise.
--I swear on the life of The Orange
The Orange is a nickname we gave to Theo, because his fur is sort of orang-y.
--Wow. Ok. You’re good.
I welcome pajamas, brush my teeth, and return to the room of hoof-prints. I don’t bother with my hair. I haven’t even brushed it yet-- I just combed it with my fingers during the awards because I knew I’d have nothing else to do.
I don’t like this time of the day. It’s far too thought-inviting. Far too teardrop rain and sky vulnerable. I don’t like it. It’s that time of day in those books where the teenagers think about wanting to die. That, or they’re impulsive and have sex or drugs something like that. I don’t want to die, and I’ve never done...the other things. I’m not impulsive. I think too much to be impulsive. Plus, Roth isn’t here, so it’s not like...never mind.
I’m laying on the bed again. I do wish Roth was here though. No, wait, I’ve said this before. But it’s true. I miss him. His family moved after he graduated last year, and I only get to see him for about a week every few months. His parents are separated but not divorced. I can’t imagine a life like that. His mother is lovely, though. I like her a lot. I just wish she didn’t have to go so far for her new job and bring Roth so far away, even if his college is closer to where they moved--about 5 hours from here.
He’s different, you see. He has quick, veiny hands that would, if properly trained, make great instrument-playing hands. Long fingers that would make a great pianist or guitarist live on his hands. He played the bass when he was younger, but he says he was never good with music. From what I’ve heard of his singing, he’s truly not that bad, but he never was comfortable when I tried to teach him guitar.
The bed vibrates. Buzzz. Buzzz. Buzzz. Roth.
--And how are you my lovely sprite?
I light up. The first real smile in days. I’m a sprite? How lovely to be a sprite...How lovely to be loved...I’m beyond words.
--You just lit up the whole damned gloomy tear-rain head-sky day!!!
--I do what I can <3
He is everything. I swear to all the spirits, he is everything that no other man alive is. He his everything. He has changed, which is the most lovely part of all. There was not always such an easy smoothness to him. At first meeting, one will note him as socially awkward, quiet, emotionless, and as he’s been called before, “sketchy.” He looks that way, sure, Holocaust-thin, as we say, and pale, with posture that could use improvement and dark hair that falls just above his dark eyes, he appears sketchy. I don’t deny it. But books are rarely true to their covers, are they?
I flick the lights off and finally climb into bed for real. I write “Roth” in the air with my hand. I stare at the ambiguously white ceiling. I think about the teenagers from those books. I think about Roth. I think about Haley, and school, and death, and words, and my head being the sky and sewing my mouth shut and cutting all my hair off. I think about music and Japanese drawings and the poems written on bits and pieces of my life and turning the car lights off and work I didn’t do for French. I think about brushing my teeth again and taking photographs and going to Thailand and the graduation dress hanging in my closet that no one likes but me. I think about the calendar on my wall that still says “May” and the--Buzzz. Buzzz. Buzzz. Roth.
I breathe.
--Get some rest, okay?
--Okay.
--I love you, okay?
--I love you too. More than not being the sky.
--Wow. You’re good.
--Goodnight?
--Goodnight <3

how is it
that I have yet
to be the sky to-
day?
I apologized and
was silent and
ran further than I
should have.
hospitals and texts
I pretend I haven’t
seen, to keep from becoming
the sky.
I haven’t spoken
aloud in
months.
years.
I love you, who
name me a sprite,
for you are
everything.
but,
I have to
think
of a better
way
to keep the
sky up there
and out of my head
because the thoughts are
clouds
and the sky is a growing
storm.

I crumple the pen-soaked tissue and push it under my pillow.