Her hair was red. It burned brighter than a flame and was deeper than her blood. It flowed through the warm, summer air. It was the heart of the sunset. Her red 1953 Buick Skylark matched it. She was running. Just her and her sweet daughter. Running from the past. The scars that he left were a far darker red. A dark cherry. Just like the empty bottle of wine that lay in the passenger side. It was a cherry wine. It became her life. The only thing she could turn to. Her daughter lay asleep in the passenger side, the red ribbon still in her long locks. Life was beginning to spin all around her. Her vision filled with red. A stop sign flying by. The lights seeming so close. “Mom!”, her daughter wailed out. Then it was quiet. The familiar deep red blood flowed out. It was over. It was red.

I stumble, following the sound of the piano, through the grass as tall as I am that's so dry it crackles like straw under my fingertips. And as I reach the top of the muddy hill (it must've rained yesterday), I see another one further away with a single, half-dead willow standing framed against the slate-blue clouds. I can hear the sea by now, not in my ears but in my veins. I know it's just beyond that willow. As I heave my back straight, there's a hot feeling at the pit of my throat, like a ball of built up breath that's stuck, mingling within itself every time I exhale. It's  strangely hot even though the moor is windy enough to make my ears go numb. It tastes bitter and acidic, yet it doesn't burn. I part my freezing lips and take a breath of the cold, clear air. The feeling stays, but I don't care.

I can hear the sea past the willow. I push through the grass and follow the sound of the piano.

My heart was racing, even though we were winning by two. I’ve been training many years for this game. Colleges with the best soccer programs have come to see me play; I can’t ruin this opportunity to get a scholarship.

It started raining hard, but we still maintained possession. I made a diagonal run so I could get a split pass. The ball was skidding across the wet grass, which helped me get past three midfielders. I looked up and saw that there were just two more defenders to get by, and the goalie. I did a step-over to get past the first defender. As she was chasing me from behind, I could feel her warm breath on my back. As I was dribbling toward the last defender, I faked the direction I was going, but I heard something unusual happen to my shinbone. POP.

I fell to the ground, hugging my right knee into my chest, trying to ease the pain somehow. The referee blew his whistle. I saw coach sprinting across the field to help me. She picked me up into her arms and ran to her car. Suddenly, my vision blurred. I fell into an involuntary sleep.

The new professor yanks down a white projector screen. The screen is a shade so blank, it never be found in nature. Digital images flash unnaturally on that screen, sending my head reeling again and again. The new professor uses a laser pointer to lecture, so he never rises from his pallid, metallic chair. But, his potbelly jiggles like gelatin as it strains through his pasty, polystyrene suit. 

Behind my wan desk are bleached shoes and unpigmented papers. In front, girls with ivory nails whip out iPhones with colorless cases.

How I miss the old blackberry-black chalkboard peeking out from under dust and white screens. How I miss the sunny yellow chalk dust which smelled like freedom and tree bark. How I miss the old professor who gestured so animatedly in his ocean-blue t-shirt. 

How I miss my friends before they bought white shoes and white phones.

How I miss chalkboard society.

When you look up at the night sky you might see thousands of swirling balls of gas or you might see millions of twinkling lights,too many to count. People are all very different so it only makes sense that all of our perspectives and views of the world are also very different. An example of this is the riddle “if a tree falls in the forest and nobody's around to hear it did it really make a sound? I mean logically of course it still makes a sound but figuratively it does not. Figuratively no one heard. and it didn't make a sound because no one cared enough to listen to it. Maybe if someone had cared enough to listen to Emily she wouldn't be dead. 

Emily Marie Jackson was born on May 22nd, 2000 and her life ended on April 14th, 2017. Killed by a car but it wasn't an accident, at least not on her end. Suicide. What an ugly word.

Off they went in the back of a dark trunk with lots of others like them. It was scary for me as a little girl who had no say. I was just 8 years old, a legal American with a parent and family who are immigrants from Mexico. I didn’t know what to do, I was shocked and scared all at once. It was just me, the apartment and my dad, no one else. I was so used to always having my Mexican family around me to support me and help me in so many different ways. It was strange not having them there. All my family was gone except for one. The rest were all gone forever. Our close tight knit family was separated in an instant, in one night, September 3rd, 2010.

            Mr. Park today seems even more burnt out, perhaps even gaunt. His footsteps are sluggish and faltering as he walks into the classroom. His clothes are disheveled, his shirt collar sticking out and his hair hastily combed. He lays a hand on his chair to steady himself. “Students, let’s now turn to page 46.”
            “Um…”A student wearing a pair of round, gold-tinted eyeglasses cautiously raises his hand. “We actually left off at page 127.”
            The teacher closes his eyes. “Oh, you’re right,” he sighs as he runs a hand through his hair. “If I remember correctly, your homework was—” He suddenly slumps back into the whiteboard, crumpling headfirst onto the marble tiles.

            A wailing ambulance plows through the roads like a war tank in a battlefield. The paramedics fasten Mr. Park onto the stretcher with orange belt buckles.

            Afterwards, parents are already waiting at the front desk, ready to shuttle their kids off to their next academy.

            A Gangnam mother, with a pair of dark glinting sunglasses weaved into a short lightly dyed bob, leans against the front desk with her Louis Vuitton bag on one shoulder. “Miss, since the class was cancelled, could we get a refund?”

White like the spit from offended mouths, I promise I am pure. As holy as my baptism candle, I drip. Drip with the complexity of a dainty schoolgirl. White, I am whole. Dear God and I’m sorry mom, I’ve been asking for forgiveness but I wish I had something that I had done wrong. I am pure. The purest of them all He chose me. Titled me messiah and gave me the power to declare those who are unworthy. My breath is white like the smoke that engulfs my family like Waco. Everything’s bigger in Texas. White heat, this is exactly what they needed. Sent the beauty of ivory angels to be kissed by sacred sun. My white knuckles clenched the matchbox, but I promise there was no hesitation. As the sky turned the perfect shade of alabaster, I watched my own personal Mount Sinai burn with the white light of the Lord smiling down on me.

He was a fire. Bright, hot, all-consuming. He gave off heat that singed the icy edges around my heart. He was the sun that came out every day and lit up my world, swallowed the secrets hidden in the dark. All I ever could be was the moon that reflected his light. Some days full of his radiance, others just waning away. Day and night we followed the cycle. My night would bleed into his light and force it away for hours at a time, and he would never give up. But fires go out, consumed by water, or starved of oxygen. Even stars explode; the sun cannot last. I am stuck with my darkness, which lasts forever. He couldn’t give me his light for eternity, but he taught me how to build a fire of my own. He told me it’s not who I am in the dark, but who I am in the absence of it. As he left, I lit a candle.

Happily Ever After

A wedding ring. A symbol of hope, love and trust. She couldn’t wait to have that ring. After years of falling in love, he finally gave her the wedding ring she always wanted. She loved that ring. She loved him. As her days went on so did the ring. The ring was covered in a mess of cookie dough. The warm waters of mexico. Tapping against their kitchen table. Scratching against the child safety of a prescription pill bottle. The ring was thrown against the egg shell white paint on the wall time and time again. And time and time again the ring was put back on her slim finger. She sat down at her desk fidgeting with her wedding ring, marveling at its beauty once again. She returns home to see the person who gave her the ring lying with another woman. She runs out frantically trying to take off the ring. It won’t budge. She ignores it and grabs the pill bottle. She collapses on the floor as the ring slides off her finger and rolls into the corner.