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I remember this one time I was doing the laundry in the backyard. When I stepped back, I felt something soft and alive under my sandal. I instantly froze as the hair all over my body stood up on its ends. I quickly stepped away and scanned the ground to see what in the world I had stepped on. Please don’t let it be a baby mouse, I thought to myself. We always have little mice scurrying out and about. GASP…. it was a baby bird, still and motionless. It must have fallen out of its nest, I thought as I scanned the birdhouse and tree branches for its parents. Horrified, thinking I had killed it with my foot, I ran and got ma, who was working in the garden. Unable to understand my squeamishness, not to mention my gibberish, she got the gist of what I was trying to say and went to check. She called me back and reluctantly, I went, staying at least ten feet away.

“Look”, she says, “it has already been dead for a while. Ants and other insects are already feasting on it.”

“I didn’t kill it?”, I asked as I inched forward and letting out a big sigh of relief.

I took a closer look. Ants and beetles were making their way through, over, under, and around the bird. Poor bird 😦 I wish its life had turned out better.

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Dwelling upon that memory, I saw a dead squirrel on the middle of the road again. I always try to avoid running over dead animals (and live ones) because just like stepping on the baby bird, I have a feeling that I will feel their lifeless bodies, so still and motionless, with my tires. Just thinking about it sends shivers down my spine. Plus, they’ve been through enough. I don’t want to add more to their misery.

Stargirl

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“She laughed when there was no joke. She danced when there was no music. She had no friends, yet she was the friendliest person in school. In her answers in class, she often spoke of sea horses and stars, but she did not know what a football was… She was elusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a cork board like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew.”

– Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl

You know the type of stories that take hold of your hand and pull you right in? It is as if it is saying, “Yes, yes, I know who you are. Come in, come in, settle down, make yourself comfortable.” And as soon as you start, it’s as if you were there all along, all cozied up. Stargirl is that type of story. As soon as I knocked on its door, I just couldn’t stop. Just one more chapter. The character of Stargirl is one my favorite characters. She’s always out there, being our inner us. Dancing in the rain during school hours, singing Happy Birthday songs during lunch hour, cheering for the opposite team during games or even caring when someone from the opposite team gets hurt. She shows that she is just a human being. Her caring nature shines through so much that she does not see that there are “social rules” that everyone follows. To be honest, she reminds me of Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter. Luna also didn’t have a lot of friends because everyone thought that she was so out there, but those that took the time to understand her, became some of her closest and dearest friends.

I have a love and hate relationship with Leo, the male protagonist in this story. He supports Stargirl when they are to themselves but abandons her when his peers isolate him from everything. Although I do feel sorry for him when Stargirl leaves; he realizes too late of what really mattered. But, as the years passed by, he seems to have picked up some of Stargirl’s quirks such as dropping a quarter in the street, walking in the rain without an umbrella, reading the newspaper all over, etc. But in the end he knows that he is not alone and that just like he did not forget about her, she did not forget about him.  Because a day before his birthday, he received a gift-wrapped package in the mail. It was a porcupine necktie.

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what is it about people that makes the letters coming out of my mouth trip and tumble. is it their masculinity, femininity, androgyny. is it the way they carry themselves or the way they hold your gaze, as if the longer they stare, the more they peer into your soul. time seems to stand still but in reality it is just hammering away at you to keep your pace up. so when someone says it’s okay slow down take your time my mind is trying to find a hundred ways to say the same phrase while my mouth, flustered, tries to gather the fallen letters and produce, somewhat, the original words. and when it does, sighing a “i did it” relief, they have the audacity to say i’m sorry i wasn’t paying attention what did you say. SIGH.

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i wish i could express myself in a picture

but you’ll just have to deal with my words

and my silence instead.

i am no artist.

i do not make people’s heart sway.

Things Time Can’t Tell

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I wish time wouldn’t live up to its name sometimes. It runs when there’s no need and slows when I can’t handle it any longer. The tic toc tic … tic toc tic toc tic toc tic toc drives me bonkers sometimes. In a silent room, that’s all there is to that. I wish we could’ve had a nice chat over coffee, but its hands are bound, its feet running. My future, unspoken of. So I sit here not knowing who I can be or what is to be made of me. Mold me like clay but don’t destroy me. I’m already shattered.

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If I Were Me

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How can I expect me to be me when I’m shattering into a million fragments. Even if I could be put together again, will I be the same. Missing pieces will forever be lost pieces. Even if, and when, I were to be me again, would I be me. Or would it be the me that was lost in the first place. Or ….on second thought…the me that will be never found again. Hmm?