Do images ever flash through your mind? A streaming rocket of a story that interrupts your day, making you grab the closest pen and scrabble down all you can remember. Do poems ever swell up within you? They writhe so that you feel a pricking need to write them down, as if these words will present to you an answer; as if they’ll be your epiphany. It’s a mystery to me as to where the words come from. It’s as if they’ve been shot through the sky only to land into the hearts of every writer. We don’t know why we must convey these short bursts of a story, and yet that certain nagging forces us to write them down. They’re snippets, fragments of a tale that will perhaps never be revealed to us. Or perhaps these snippets may lead to an even greater discovery. I collect little bits of prose such as these, mostly typing them quickly into my phone at night. I have no idea what the purpose of these little bits of words and ideas are, and yet I feel the need to finally put them on my blog. They are little notes-to-self, others are bits of poems, and some are the shards of an even larger story. Below I have included all of my favorite little snippets; the words that have shot at me during the night. Perhaps they’ll form a road, a cobblestone one, full of various stones, stomped and smudged until they can finally pass as an official road. Maybe ideas will travel this road, (and hopefully interesting people too) all directing me towards my eventual book, and then, onward again. Anyway, here’s a small glimpse into all of my fleeting thoughts:
Freckles: the inverse of stars stained upon our faces.
The sun mimics stained glass as it filters through the leaves, creating its own mosaic of light and shadow.
Yellow beams of florescent light caught on her skin, creating a halo; an industrial halo.
The book was of ideal size, just large enough to make you feel like you were participating in some intimate secret, the size which represents a lifespan: medium. As you open the book once again that familiar, musky scent rises to greet you, a book’s embrace. Your past encounters are also bound within the pages, remnants of your past embedded on paper. A briny coffee drop stained page 63, a careless mistake you made in a Chicago cafe (you and the book were still only strangers then; you had no idea of the excitement and discovery you would experience later on ). On the last page of the book, the caramel-colored paper is ripped over The End, the effect of a teardrop which had fallen upon the first reading. As you trace your hand over it now, not even a trace of that sadness stirs within. The book once held such wonders for you, and you acknowledge that fact, you even long for that feeling to surge once more. It never comes. You set the book down and reach for another one, waiting to see if it will reveal something even greater to you.
It’s hard to believe that this moment too will subside into memory.
Transient places where dusk mixes with musk and velvet.
The deep night wind carried traces of another’s story upon it, a story which I longed to hear, but could only guess at.
Every person contributes their own enigma to this world. A patchwork quilt ghost, strung together with every suppressed thought, forgotten dream, unrequited love, and stunted potential.
But every headlight upon the open road dances like a traveling star.
Her thoughts came streaming upon her all at once, overwhelming her. And like tap flowing far too quickly, becoming a solid, white rock, glistening and frozen, so too were her thoughts; they compacted into one solid truth.
I will think of bolder, brighter words. I will scatter them in the skies above to be reflected coherently in the seas below.
The most frustrating thing: my mind not cooperating with itself.
And for once in my life I felt the birth of a sustainable happiness. Not that of which glimmers only to tarnish in the sun, the kind that could be nurtured, and whenever a storm would fall upon it, and the winds would uproot my flowers, I would put on my rubber boots the next day to go and plant them again, hopping in puddles along the way. My teardrops only helped them blossom.
I am a lover of the ghostly elegance preserved in pastel rooms, abandoned for decades.
There were whispers preserved in here, the weight of stories un-lived in by me, the weight of lives I could not touch, the weight of knowing people who would never known me.
It was stunningly simple, yet so far beyond our comprehension. The simple twirl of a ballerina, elegance of a golden chandelier, or strain of a violin: what does it communicate?
She wanted to rip open the seams which held her body together; she wanted to release her soul.
I just want to contribute something of worth to a world already sinking.
My heart beat faster yet my mind became slower.
The seats in the orchestra hall were lined with velvet, stained and worn. We felt that important people were here once, and that just maybe we were participating in something worth being remembered.
Isn’t it strange how feelings can infuse beauty in a face that was once devoid of it?
As we blew out the candle, the embers rose to kiss our cheeks.
I have to remind myself, before it even begins, not to dwell upon its stopping.
I am in love with those moments in which our souls bubble up to the surface and shine out.
The stars are the audience watching our lives, knowingly sighing at how even when we reach our greatest state, we are so delicate, so small, so fallible. I wonder if they laugh at the cruel irony enveloping us: you never chose to be here, and yet here you are.
a space to say it right 