Here I am

Just a young man

Never looked in a mirror

Never knew who I really was.

I would walk down the streets

Get to see some people

Try shaking hands

But no touch felt

But something was strange

Most faces I saw

Not all that different

Same color

Same race

Same attitude.

I fly through walls

Into the outskirts

I see people

Different people

With different color

Different race

Different attitude

Some working hard

Some giving up

Some getting whipped

It was all

Too much for my eyes

Enough to send me flying

To the state of Tennessee

Where I see a man

A man giving a speech

With people gathered

Some inspired

Some disgusted

Some who are both inspired and disgusted

The man giving the speech

Seemed to have been

Repeating two words

At the beginning of a sentence

The man looked interesting

I followed him

Followed him a whole five years

Till he was struck

By a stranger

With a gun

He bled

Bled till his death

Put in a coffin

Buried

And

Rested

In

Peace

Like

Me.

Grabbing the remote, I turned on the news. I woke up early to go to the morning shift at work. While eating my cereal I heard “Tornado wreaks havoc in Kansas City” Instant realization pours over my face. My father… My shaking hands barely able to type, I called him. No answer, no answer, no answer. Tears trickling down my face like rain. All the clouds turned grey. No answer, no answer, “Hello?.” But it wasn’t my dad. It was a woman. He was dead. He was dead to me while sleeping with a mistress in New York.

They told me it would look like mud, but all I could see was the depths of the earth.

The rich, deep soil that nourished the most radiant of flowers.  A winter-bound leaf falling from an amber tree. Melted chocolate emitting a sweet smell in a bakery.  A ray of sunlight filtering through a glass of whiskey. Strong, dark coffee, white cream swirling in the steam.

A thousand images flashed before my dull blue eyes as I got lost in hers.  I had seen them in pictures before, documentaries, textbooks, the whole liking.  I knew what they looked like. I knew the color. But to see them now, in person, with my own…

Why had it been removed?

“As you can see,” the tour guide continued, her drone projecting from the back of our group, “this young woman possesses the brown-eyed gene, which was the first to be removed from the human gene sequence in twenty eighty-one.  The brown-eyed gene has been extinct for sixty-four years, longer than both the green, yellow, and grey-eyed genes.”

Her scripted words meant as much to me as I’m sure they meant to herself.  We all knew the stats; they’d been taught to us in every history class since the fourth grade.  The entire human race was one stinking example of the mutation of genetics and the Strive Towards Perfection movements in twenty ninety.  There was nothing in the books left to learn.

Which was why I had begged for the last spot on the tour.

My grades were good.  Honors classes, the standard piano lessons, track practices, blah, blah  I managed to never get anything lower than a B. But these kids, the rest of my stuck up group never failed to get lower than an A+.  I had to beg and plead and make promises that I knew I could never fulfill to earn the last spot on the educational Tour of the Past, meant only for students going into history fields.  

I don’t know why, but some part of me knew that the year twenty nineteen would be worth it.  I was so insanely sick of staring at the same frigid blue eyes that my family, friends, and teachers possessed.  They were pedestrians on the street, the guy behind the cash register, the dogs thrown in the pound. They were in my face, in the same mirror every single day.  

“Disgusting.”

I involuntarily turned my head around at the source of the voice.  It was Owen Smith, shaking his head and taking a picture.

Of course.  How could I expect anything else from our blue-eyed class president?

The girl picked up the small silver tube, the same one she’d used two times already, and began putting the paste onto her eyelashes again.  They were so short, nothing like today’s eyelashes, and the paste barely did anything to lengthen them. She did it expertly, making sure that each individual hair was covered.  Even through the jerking movements of her dancing and her off-key singing, she managed to put it on without smudging.

“The song playing is called Despacito, a popular song written by the famous composer Justin Bieber.”  The tour guide added, speaking mainly to Owen. A few murmurs from the students could be heard, likely from the music-lovers.  Pop-culture students, the ones who were obsessed with old composers, like Ariana Grande, Madonna, Taylor Swift, Maroon Five, along with Justin Bieber.  

“Bieber’s music is famously known for beginning the tradition known as Homecoming, a ritual dance done by people from ages fourteen to eighteen.  Homecoming symbolized the start of a new beginning to the educational cycle, one that, unlike today’s, only lasted eight months of the year. This woman is preparing herself for Homecoming.”

She spent so much time around the eyes.  A thousand shades of powder, several layers of paste, a crayon, and a weird pointy paint thing.  When she was done, she leaned forward into the mirror, coffee eyes circulating her face to make sure that everything was in place, everything was how she wanted it.  She decided it was, I think.

A huge smile broke across her face.  

Incidentally, the corners of my mouth tilted up with her’s.  Her cinnamon eyes squinted in delight and a small intent made its way onto her cheek.  The abnormalities of dimples would never have been allowed today. It was disturbing and unusual at first, but after a moment I came to see how dreamy they looked on her bronze skin.  I had only ever seen them in the books before.

“Yes, queen!”

Her voice was filled with such pride and vigor and happiness that I nearly jumped back in awe.  I knew what she meant by the term “yes, queen,” of course. We had annotated texts that used the language; stories filled with historically famous quotes.  "Yes queen," "bae," "hit the whip."  Though the books made me yawn, it was fascinating to see terms being used in the atmosphere of twenty nineteen.  

Why was she so happy?

It was a strange thing to see.  In the textbooks, anyone you saw with brown eyes was always frowning, arms crossed and head hanging down shamefully.  The color represented the lower class, the only people who couldn’t afford the procedure and lighten the color. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t something to be flaunted or proud of.  At least, that’s what they told us.

I hoped that the rest of the group couldn’t see how intensely I was watching her.  

“And just ahead of us, we have the Space Odyssey Trials of twenty seventy-four.”

What?

Panic surged to my head as the people surrounding me began to migrate forward with the tour guide.  Why were they leaving so soon? Had I gotten so lost in her eyes that I lost track of time? I didn't want to leave.  Twenty nineteen seemed like such an amazing place, filled with dimples and Homecoming and pretty brown eyes. I wanted to cling as hard as I could to the warm coffee of her eyes and stay there, away from the cold-hearted blue eyes that plagued the world.  I wanted to just stay there, in twenty nineteen.

“Right this way.”

If I listen

I can hear the fan whirling

If I listen

I can hear the birds chirping

If I listen

I can hear the sadness in the air

If I listen

I can hear that life isn’t fair

If I listen

I can hear the life all around me

If I listen

I can hear the words within me

don’t text first,

don’t text last,

don’t get left on read,

and don’t leave others on read.

stop capitalizing “i” because

you’re not that important.

stop going after the quiet ones

and thinking you are the one

who can get them to open up,

because you can, they will,

but wikipedia says out of three tons

only three or four oysters will

produce perfect pearls

and sometimes you should listen to the odds.

odd one out is often self-prescribed and you should

run far, far away from those who think

they’re quirky enough to use it.

don’t cry over friends who don’t love you

as much as you love them

because you knew they wouldn’t,

don’t tell people you cried over them

because no one likes a guilt trip

and it’s not like things will change.

not everything is

black and white

some are mother-of-pearl,

a silver lining.

actually listen to everyone telling you

you deserve better.

simply agreeing is not enough.

stop being all talk,

start being actions,

measurable and memorable.

keep the promises you make to yourself

because you know the shouldn’ts

and the mustn'ts better than anyone:

you aren’t dumb and everyone knows it,

so stop saying it.

it’s okay to spend some time

in your shell.

you’ve hardened for a reason,

to keep the tender skin inside

safe from incisive beaks.

smile with teeth and

be all bite and no bark.

and if nothing else, for the love of God,

stop scrabbling at oysters

and trying to fit your fingers in the seams.

stop picking the empty shells to pry open.

you will break a nail,

or slice a finger on a

deceptively smooth edge

and watch red bloom

into cloudy waters.

She reappears in my dreams tonight.

The usual French braid she loves to wear falls over one of her shoulders, dealing with the abundant golden silk threads she possesses and resembling the pure aura that always follows her. Her shift white dress swirls lightly with every step she takes, and the ray lights that illuminate her path favor her tone painted by the sun, as her skin becomes the most beautiful painting among all. Her sedulous chiseled hands reach out, inviting temptation to outstand the electric touch she causes by sending waves of energy with the soft pressure of her fingertips. Her light pink lips mirror her heart-shaped smile, driving a winter breeze that blows our entire surroundings, freezing a moment for just the two of us to exist. She is perfection made in flesh.

You whisper her name as you come closer, being pulled by the gravity of her presence. Not my name, never my name.

Not in reality, at least. Does it matter? For I long for the dream to never end, for having the opportunity of being her if only then I can be with you.

Well, the first day of school is over. It has been for a few weeks now, and I am glad of it. I do not think the first day of school went very well, and I wish I had made better choices. As a matter of fact, the first day of school went really badly and I made terrible choices that could have easily been avoided. Let me tell you how it went. The day started out wrong from the moment I woke up to the sound of my alarm beeping like crazy. That alarm is so annoying. I woke up on time but made the seemingly great decision at the time, to sleep in thirty minutes longer than usual for a school day. So as a result, I was running pretty late. After that the day only got worse and it was all my fault. During the car ride to school, I picked a fight with my sister about who was doing more chores, and kicked my little brother which made him cry. My mom then took away my phone, and grounded me for a week! I still feel like that was a too big of punishment, but I guess I could have behaved better while I was in the car. We arrived at school fifteen minutes late and took my time walking to math class. Math is my least favorite subject in school. I had not eaten breakfast that morning so once I go to math class I tried to force my friend to give me her bagel. This did not work at all.  She threw a fit about how I always boss her around. We were arguing while the other students were correcting and turning in their homework when the teacher came up behind us and gave us detention for being a distraction. Then my friend and I made the silent decision to joined forces and focus all our anger on our teacher. We did our best to annoy him all class. We passed notes to other student, threw pencils across the classroom, made paper airplanes, and talked while the teacher was explaining, or trying to explain, how to do math problems on the whiteboard. By the end of math class we had four other students joining us in detention. Detention wasn’t going to be that bad if all my friends were there. My next class was English and I had chosen not to do my summer reading assignment. All the other students had read the assigned book and written an essay about the protagonist of the story. The teacher gave me a zero, and said that I had better do well in her class from then on and do all of my homework. I told her that I would only do the homework if I felt like it. She took a while to respond, and I thought I was going to get away with talking back to her! My assumption was incredibly, terribly wrong. She is making me come to her classroom every school day during lunch to read the book assigned to us over the summer, and write the essay on the protagonist. It was the first day of school, and I couldn’t eat lunch with my friends! I am only three chapters into the book, and it is the most boring book I have ever read! I made sure to tell my English teacher that on my way out of her class room after lunch. The other classes besides the last class of the day were relatively uneventful because my friends, who I would have seen at lunch, were not in them with me. I am glad they were not, because I would probably have been given detention after school every day until next year. My last class of the day was Spanish. I took Spanish class last year, but I failed it and I have to retake it. There is a ton of 9th graders in there. All the other kids in my grade are in Spanish 2. Right when I walked into the classroom my Spanish teacher looked at me and said I hope you are going to try harder this year. This made me get really, really mad! I felt like I gave some effort last year, maybe not as much as I could have, but I did try a little bit! I turned in most of the homework, it’s not my fault that the tests were really hard.  I told the teacher that if she wanted me to try more, maybe she should not be so boring. She sent me straight to the office. The principal told me that I needed to go home because of everything that had happened that day. My other teachers must have told him what happened in their classes. When my mom picked me up from school, she was very mad. I began to realize that I had started off the school year in a bad way. Now I am going to have to work really hard in all my classes to make up for how I acted. I have to go to English class at lunch to do the summer homework, and I don’t think that I will be finished with it anytime soon. Everyone else took the whole summer vacation to do it. We are having a test over the book in a couple weeks. My English teacher said I still have to take it even if I have not finished the book. In all of my classes I am not allowed to sit next to my friends. This means that my friends are becoming better friends, and leaving me out. There are no other tenth graders in my Spanish class, so I sit at a table by myself. My mom makes me go to a tutor for math and Spanish to make sure that I will pass both classes. I never thought I would say this, but I just wish that I could start the school year all over again. I would make better choices, and be able to sit with my friends at lunch. I miss them a lot.

Leaves swirling all around me

The scent of apples crisp in the air

The world around me starts to change

To shades of orange, yellow, and red

I feel a cool breeze brush my face

It twists the trees then quickly leaves

I see the apple blossoms turn to fruit

The warmth of summer cascades away

And I am left with the chilly breeze

Of Autumn’s warm glow

Diversity is a curse.

And failure to revel in the opaque vowels of the lettered white-man

is a sin worthy of excommunication.

Why introduce knotted tongues to the purity of a neatly-woven America?

I have assiduously re-programmed myself

to regard my tongue as nothing less than “American”—

prideful of having sloughed my tongue of its Asian snake-skin,

no longer labeled as a “migrant” worth shunning

by the clunky inflections that arrest her foreign tongue.

Yet my mother sits at her vanity with a glass of wine,

laboriously mouthing an ill-fitting language in the mirror,

her tongue clumsily dancing a tango, not knowing that America

is a waltz.

And though my mother’s American label reads “alien,” “intruder,” “displaced,”

I feel my own tongue paralyzed by an unexpected shame,

for despite my efforts I have found,

that as unnatural and alien as is my mother’s tongue,

that in escaping the foreigner’s label,

I am a different kind of refugee,

One adrift from her own identity.

It had been a difficult two years for the soldier. He’d seen things he wished he could forget, lost comrades, and now he had to come home to an empty home. There was no one waiting for him there. 

The most difficult struggle was the loss of his dog. They were both excited to go home when she suddenly disappeared in combat. He missed her dearly. 

But he found no point in hoping; his home was too far from the battle site. He didn't think there was a chance that she could still be alive, and if she was, she could never have found him all those miles away. As he walked up the porch steps to the door of his small cabin, a dog covered in mud came bounding out of the woods. As the dirt fell away, he instantly recognized his dog. When she reached him, she smothered his face in licks, wiping away his tears.