When I first came into this world, this town was leaving it. I was the only one who knew.  Nobody really noticed me, but I noticed everything. It was little things, at first. The way the door to the library creaked as the doors split open, they way little sprouts of grass grew from the sidewalk, like vines reclaiming nature as their own. As I grew older, I was played on, but not noticed. I just wasn’t big enough. The kids disappeared, one by one, anyway, as they grew up. There were more important things to do. Sam was destined to be a dancer, Ethan, an artist. Valerie moved away when her talent for the violin bloomed, and Jack’s talent for photography would only develop if he was somewhere bigger, better. This town just wasn’t important enough. As I slowly  grew taller and taller, more people realized how this town was dying. Even more people moved on, until there were none left. Now I stand at my full height, two hundred feet. I stand over the now dusty square and the abandoned playground. I am majestic, but nobody is here to see me. It’s too late to be noticed.

A man is depressed. He goes to talk to his friend about his troubles. They sit outside and the man says that each day is the same for him. The joy he had in the past disappeared. The friend said nothing for awhile, reflecting on the friend’s life. He then told the man to go into town and see the circus. The circus would make him happy. The man went to the circus. He was not happy. When he told his friend this his friend said nothing for awhile, reflecting on the friend’s life. He told the man to see a clown. The clown would make him happy. The man went to see the clown. He was not happy. When he told his friend this the friend took a piece of paper and a small container filled with ink. He threw the ink onto the paper. He asked his friend what he saw. He said he saw a mess. A waste of ink. A black area. The man said that he mentioned not once the white part of the paper, the true beauty left unnoticed. The paper showed how he viewed his life.

Agnar would be executed the next day. He’d killed several people but didn’t care. He thought about this as he shifted against the cold stone cell wall. He was getting restless.

Agnar had tested his chains before to no avail, but something about today felt different. He glanced through the bars to see if the guards were paying attention, but they were nowhere to be seen. Agnar pulled at his chains and jumped when a crack echoed throughout his cell. He’d pulled free! He climbed up and out the small window, reveling in his newfound freedom.  He paused as he thought this. The people he killed would never get a chance like this. He tried to reason with himself, but as he stole away into the forest beyond, he couldn’t silence the nagging voice in his head telling him he’d been wrong to kill them. He kept walking deeper into the forest, struggling to ignore the voice until he no longer could, and collapsed onto the forest floor, his eyes shut tight. When he felt a poking in his side, he opened his eyes to the stone of his cell, and heard a guard’s voice from above. “It’s time.”

“Do you wanna go shopping with me?” my sister asked, pressing her needle-thin thighs together and angling herself to emphasize a tiny bulge of fat. “Baby weight is killing my wardrobe.”

My sister, thirteen weeks pregnant, was poised to be the most insufferable mother in the history of mankind.

“Sure,” I said. I drove us both in my Honda Civic with the big dent in the front. My sister's lip only curled a bit. 

In the Old Navy racks (normally, my sister wouldn’t stoop so low, but their elastic waist pregnancy pants are to die for. and it’s not like she’s keeping them any longer than she has to) my sister asked me how you’re doing. Never told her that we ended, couldn't. My sister would lord that over me, tell my mother so they could do the lording together.

I had to think of a lie fast.

So now, she thinks you’re in Italy for a semester, working as an intern in some exclusive, expensive-sounding art museum I made up on the spot. I told her you’re staying right on the coast. How’s the weather there?

An Unwelcome Visitor

            Lily knew something like this would happen ever since she first rented a room in this creepy old house. Her roommate had gone home for the weekend, leaving Lily all alone in the big empty building. It was like the perfect set-up for a horror movie.

            It all started like this:

            She had gone to bed and was trying to get to sleep when she heard a rustling sound coming from the kitchen.

            A robber, or even a ghost!

            If she lay there, it would get her. If she got up to look around, it would get her even faster. Finally, she made a decision. She ran out the front door. Into the snow. In her bare feet. She tore like a flash to her neighbor’s house. John grabbed a baseball bat and followed her back to her kitchen…

            No one.

            Then they heard a rustle.

            It was coming from… a boot? Her roommate Joanna had left her snow boots by the front door. One of them was swaying from side to side. John picked it up and looked inside. Then he started laughing.

            It was a baby possum!

            Lily had no trouble falling asleep after that.

Four too much, but two too little. The myriad of pastel colors beckoned to her, and her eyes focused on the candles like a kleptomaniac. But how to reach them?

3 feet 8 inches. Tiptoeing only added so much—her toenails had gotten too long.

A rusty piano chair was dragged out from underneath the once beloved black and white keys. The B and C dissonance resonated through the high, cobweb lined ceilings.

Pink, blue, green.

Pink for the ribbon on the gift she had dreamed she’d have.

Blue for the passport she was never allowed to open.

Green for the tablecloth, not a wrinkle in sight, laid on the dinner table.

Waiting was silence, but silence was not waiting.

Red for the wailing firetruck, red for the carefully drawn lipstick on the sobbing woman’s face, red for the sympathy casseroles.

Red for the picture perfect icing on the cake, waiting, still waiting for its candles.

I am in love with sound. I mean, I am afraid of silence. I mean, I am used to a house full of a dog barking and a trumpet upstairs and my brother and sister’s voices in the kitchen.  When my sister leaves for college, she takes her trumpet and her voice with her. I am learning to fill the silence. I wonder if this is what it means to move forward, this quiet that stays behind. I join drumline, stand next to snare drums and this, this is finally noise, I am in love with noise, marching season ends and there are no more snare drums and my sister’s trumpet is halfway across the country and I am afraid of silence. I hear a trumpet warming up in a practice room, and I think those scales turn me back into a person. There are still voices in my kitchen. I saw a poster once, big black letters saying, perhaps it is music that will save the world. I think, the poster was so, so close to the point, I think, the poster was wrong. It is not that music will save the world, but that silence will end it.

At 7:00 AM, I woke up ready for a days work. Jack, the boy who bought me was still asleep in his bed. I got up and walked back to the place Jack had last left me, in the living room on the couch. At 7:30, Jack woke up and went down the stairs to eat his breakfast, only to find that he forgot me in the living room. He ran over to the couch, coming to pick me up, and as he was about to hug me, I could tell by the expression on his face that having me brought him so much joy. The only thing he didn’t know was that when I was with Jack, not only did he have a good time, but so did I. I could no longer pretend that I wasn’t alive, so when he put me back on the couch I said to him nervously “Wait.” Looking back at me astonished. Then saying “You can talk!” “Are you scared?” I ask, replying, he says “No, I love that you can talk! It’s like having a friend over all the time. Then we sat down and talked and talked and talked.

She walked past him like a fourth of July parade. Full of the shades of every skin color he’s ever seen. She was a Moroccan architectural design. She was the sun setting, the grounded roots of redwood trees. She was the sky when God had given up and the breath of lavender when he came. She was all the colors the world had ever offered. She was seven in one. Folded from other universes, past lives linking from every eyelash on her eyes to every toe on her feet, she was a multi person, the mother, the rainbow. The creator of the next planet, she was.

     Her hair radiantly shining the glow that she stole from the sun, orange. Her ears that pierced the living souls to spirits of life as she heard them in their true form, blue. Her fingernails digging into the soil of the infertile land to grow everlasting redwood trees, green. Her eyes that sunk into every desire of a goal she ever had, red. Her skin vaporizing into the dreams of what might have been, violet. Her lips as vast as the sea, deeper than the mid sky. They knew sincerity, indigo. Her feet that left prints of futuristic ideas where hunger ended and was buried into the ground, yellow.

     He was nothing but green. Just green, not the green like the leaves on a tree or the freckles of grass on dry land, he was plain and green, envious of every personality that ran by him, that walked by him, that flew by him, he was too focused on them. Only seven and he was green, only seven and she created him green. Green like the monster under children's beds, not the green of her fingernail. His mother was blue, faithful to the heavens and like the sea her mind had no true end. His father was yellow, but not like her feet that left optimistic ideas, but rather he was a liar, deceitful from the moment he ran away from his duties of war. His grandfather was green too, like the trees in Christmas. But he was still different, no matter how much he tried to change, he was just not the same as them. His shade of green couldn’t be put into the rainbow.

     She created all of them, in all her persons she created him.

     Once a child was born they had the choice to change perspectives. Yellow was positive, but also cowardly. Red was passionate, but also anger. Orange was creative, but also destructive. Indigo was sincerity, but also two-faced. Blue was loyal, but also betrayal. Green was fertile, but also sterile.Violet was calm, but also agitating. Though he was the first to not be a real shade of the rainbow or any characteristics of other properly shaded greens, no one doubted his existence, for he was more beautiful than any landscape ever seen.

     She walked across the ocean where waves grew in every step she took. Rumors of her creating a new world, a world that held different colors were spreading, and she wanted recruits. She glanced at his green eyes that wore nothing, but the nakedness of her child, for she was the mother of all. Her hand grazed the fingertips of his, “I shall call you Morning Star. You will bring the most from all around you.”

     He held her hand that knew everything, for it was once everything, and as a servant he stood to her right, placing his feet behind hers when she walked, discoloring every positive path meant for humanity. “For as long as I am with you, for as long as you bestow this power upon me, I will stay like no other of your angels have, for as long as you love me, as long as I hold your hand, as long as I breath your life, as long as it’s just you and me, I will never betray you.”

Lost Causes

It was October 28th, the feast day of the patron saint of lost causes. Which was a perfect description of the family’s chances of getting to church on time that morning. Everyone was running around the house shouting things like, “Where’s my purse?” or “Why doesn’t the baby have any pants on?”

            When they were finally ready, Estrella pointed a tiny finger at the garage and exclaimed gleefully, “¡Perrito!”
            “Puppy?” thought Juanita.

            Their parents arrived at the door together. Following Estrella’s gaze, they spotted a small, furry face peering out from under the car.

            “We have to keep him! Please!” they pleaded, scooping up the ball of fur.

            Mami looked confused. “Someone must have lowered him in through the bars.”

            “Well,” Papi sighed, “maybe we can make it to the next service.”

            The months passed, and Pedro grew. And grew. And grew. Then one night, Juanita jumped awake. The back door had opened! She crept downstairs in time to see Papi returning through it.

            “It was a robber,” he grinned, hugging Juanita tight. “But all I saw were his legs as he scrambled back up the wall. Pedro scared him off!”

            “Thank you, Saint Jude!” she whispered in the darkness.