Category: Fiction Shorts

(Note: Blast this simplified blog formatting.)

Make me fall in love with the school again.

The beautiful rush and thrill of learning

 

The pain and burden on all with early mornings and horrible formats and rules

The additional burden of marginalization.

 

Make me fall in love again, make it worth it, show me it’s right,

Or Change.

Because the beautiful rush of learning should not come with such a terrible price.

 

 

Make me fall in love again

With school

With this school

With learning and growing

Show me it’s worth it to be here

Show me it’s worth it to cry and loose sleep

Tell me again how to practice self care and prioritize

When turning around to tell me each assignment and piece of work

That I must complete.

Tell me how important attendance is

Tell me when everything is due

And tell me to take care of myself

That me is important

 

but loose credit if you’re out sick for more than a single day

 

make me fall in love with the thrill of learning

making a connection that was obscured before

make me excited to be in class in the morning

make me excited to hear each new lecture

make it worth the pain it causes to move

make it worth the cost of being present

 

or change it.

 

Tell me why it’s okay to be treated

as a number

as inhuman

maybe it’s not me

maybe it doesn’t touch me

and maybe I have no right to speak on it directly.

 

But I hear the people around me

and I see them even

if I am drowning here

barely keeping a head above water

let alone remembering the love of knowing anew

where is the fellow student weighed down with so much more burden?

 

Thirty feet below or more, murky depths above,

sunlight a filtered, distorted illusive warmth

 

they make themselves heard because they have to

listen to them

don’t deny or dodge

I can promise you

there is reason

and you need to trust

 

make me fall in love with school again

so many reasons not to

so many reasons to break

 

make me fall in love with the rush of knowledge

don’t taint what I can enjoy with the cries of pain

from so many sources and so many reasons

from others much burdened

from myself in so much pain

 

make me fall in love with school again.

Show me how it’s worth it and show me how it’s right to be this way

or show me how you’ll change.

Show me how it’s worth it to be treated this way

or change.

 

Change

 

because it’s needed

learning is lost in this structural chaos

long before these weeks

an idea at the start

make me fall in love with school again

 

learning is lost in this structured

lives

living

chaotic and trapped

fighting for the rush of learning to be pure and tainted no longer.

 

Learning should not need to be worth this suffering

learning should be allowed to be free and new and thrilling, as it first was.

It’s not worth it now

So change.

Change.

Make me remember what it’s like to love learning.

Let us love learning.

 

Note on “Love school again”

This is quite raw and scrabbled. It was an idea, a line. Make me love school again.

Then it was ideas, scrambled down on the page so they wouldn’t be lost. Placed haphazardly.

But then, when I look back and add on, I can’t find a pattern or a way to clean it up, and make it civilized. I don’t know that I should try anymore.

There is pain here, from experiences of other schools, of this one, of listening to the pain and burden that others have carried and carry to be here.

There is a love of learning, because that in and of itself is beautiful and creative and lovely.

There is protest of the structure that school and learning has been forced into. There is an idea that it shouldn’t be this hard or this painful. It hurts that the people trapped and hurting here aren’t just students, but everyone else in the web, stuck.

It a flawed system, but that system is mistaken for people who carry it on, because otherwise there is no where to start dismantling.

This isn’t a be all end idea or a fully articulated opinion, it isn’t edited much or rearranged and shifted to be something more beautiful or elegant. But I think maybe it shouldn’t be. Because while it isn’t complete truth, it is still truth. It is a piece, and every piece must be encouraged to be present, or we won’t ever get any closer to the complete truth.

 

(Additionally, the spacing which is always so important to poems or poetic expression are lost on this blog forum. It takes too much time and effort to re create the nuanced spacing and placement I had on my word processor. Minor spacing has been reintroduced, but otherwise each line has been given equal spacing on this medium, which is a little frustrating.)

The tiny theater is shades of black, the gaffer tape that has faded to various degree, noting the time it’s been there. The black sheets and cloth hung around the seating, the stage and the bar.

Tiny white lights line walkways, the bar, and the stage.

Tonight’s open mic night, and the second performer up is a short girl with multicolored spiky hair, steampunk-esque goggles, and a collection of fishnet, velvet, and cropped skirt, cropped top. Rivets and chains. Smokey eyes, but a rainbow pride tattoo on her shoulder.

 

Girls are like flowers and fragile and beauty.

Everyone says.

Mother nature is fragile, needs cared for, gives us everything but is weak.

Everyone says.

Nature and nurture, love and softness.

Is woman.

Everyone says.

I guess we have things in common.

The respect we get is equal.

Both of us treated badly.

Both of us warriors.

Nature will kick your ass, is only biding time.

Giving you second chances.

Nature will have a clean slate and we won’t be seen again.

I’m told my beauty is my all.

But I can’t take control.

My beauty must be given to me, acknowledged and bestowed upon me.

But goddamn,

I know I’m beautiful.

Scars and scrapes and scratches.

My mind isn’t a blemish.

My experience hasn’t drowned me yet,

Won’t drown me out.

I know I’m beautiful.

I don’t need to only care about beauty.

Nature and me, we’re warriors.

We fight, but you won’t notice.

Cause we’re beautiful.

This rose is dried and crumpled.

Missing pieces missing petals.

Bruised, beaten, and forgotten.

Beauty stolen, they say.

So forgotten.

We fight invisible,

beautiful

or forgotten.

We are the Imperfect beauty rose.

The warrior.

We fight.

Similar, not alike.

Together, but not the same.

We are our own, not the only.

We will fight.

So everyone says

They are no longer blind to our

Complexity.

Those roses were a little battered. A little bruised and a little beaten. They were dried in the vase, noting the time they had stayed there since found in every wrinkle and sharpened thorn. Each slightly bent leaf or twisted stem. The roses were a little battered. I had had them for years now. Occasionally a petal would fall, or I would almost knock them over with my awkward frame. A curtain would brush them a bit too roughly or something else would endeavor to dent or crunch them.

Only adding to their beauty. They were a legacy and history.

They were the newly made friends that ran down an ally between a suburb and a collection of little shops. They were the made up stories we told each other as we scrambled around the obstacles and were totally childish and full of laughter. We’d make up stories about the people who lived in the houses, or what really happened behind the back doors of the businesses. Pools and patios and flat grass lawns were all well and good, but the dark and mysteriously dusty shop doors could be anything.

Behind one of the shops, its front said it was a florist, there was a huge dumpster. It was at the end of the alley, where it started to turn into a field beside the suburb. There was a fence and some trees, and the house at the end of the lane. That house was the best place to tell stories about. It was covered in flowers and plants and vines and trees. All over absolutely everything. Anything could be hiding in those branches and leaves, the world’s best secrets, so we told ourselves. The trees that overhung the fence and the dumpster in the alley, from the house or the field, were huge and overgrown. Their roots made the pavement uneven and let the hardiest flowers peak through. Their leaves made it shady and cool on the hottest days.

The fan that propped the back door of the shop open on hot days blew out hot, humid air tinged with the scent of flowers and green things. Sometimes chocolate or fruit also, oddly. There was a basketball hoop attached to the back wall of the shop, and sometimes other neighborhood kids would play there, and that could always lead to more stories. My friends, we loved those stories.

One day when we were telling stories, one of the other kids got their basketball stuck in the tree closest to the dumpster. It was a knot of branches and leaves, healthy and huge, and nested gently within it, a dulled orange basketball.

They tried climbing up on the dumpster, but could only shake the branches, not shake it loose. We climbed up too, to see if we were taller enough to get the ball down. I guess we were, it shook loose and fell into the dumpster. Next to a bunch of roses. Once the basketball was returned, my friends and I retrieved the roses. It was a huge bunch, and we decided they were the most beautiful things in the world.

Some of the petals were dented, and some of the flowers were small, the stems were uneven, and broken in place. They were the most beautiful things in the world because they were dented and bruised, because they had been thrown away and still shone deep rich pigment and glorious grace.

Because we’d skinned our knees and covered ourselves in tiny scars. We’d broken bones and cut our own hair in the mirrors. Our crooked layers and lopsided ponytails were the roses proof, the roses were our proof.

Because we had loved them, because they were still beautiful, because we were still beautiful, they were the most beautiful things in the world. Their value came from themselves, not their history, and their value came from how we immediately loved them.

We’d split up the bunch between us, wondering if they had come from the beautifully overgrown house behind the shop or the shop, wondering about the story behind the flowers, but also creating the new stories that wove together with us since we found them.

Only adding to their beauty.

The room was sweltering hot and sticky. The window was open all the way and still the air felt choking. The sweet smell of the spring flowers coming through the window on the tiniest breeze took turns being sickly sweet and reminding me of the beautiful blindingly bright green world outside was new and refreshing itself.

The light coming through the window made the room feel translucent and shimmering. It was filled with bright greens, and pale tans, with dark shadowed corners. The roses on the bright shiny corner of my desk sat quietly and patiently and seemed to send out a wave of grounding calm to me.

I sat cross legged on the dark purple bed spread, the flat white pages of my homework staring back up at me blankly. It’s been hard to focus since the heat wave started. The heat feels stifling, as if it’s just pressing down on the world.

Of course, it could be the heat. Or it could have been that the heat started at almost the exact same time that I had decided to tell my best friends.

I was definitely waiting. I could feel the sweat on my skin in beads, but they didn’t string themselves down my back like they usually did in the intense heat that surrounded me. These beads of sweat stuck to me in viscous blobs, like glue or half melted hard candy.

My stomach flipped over every few moments, and I sat stock still. I could hear movement outside my window. There was even a fan in the corner set to blow continuously directly at my shoulder all night that whirred steadily. But everything felt still and pensive like me.

Just after my family had moved us here, one of the first times I’d hung out with my new friends, we’d found this bunch of slightly battered roses in the dumpster of this old man’s house. The place was covered in overgrown plants and flowers like an enchanted garden, but these flowers had been thrown away. We’d kept them, because the idea of imperfect beauty had delighted us.

I stare at the dried flowers, my breathing soft and barely noticeable. I’m lost in thought, still. The pressure of heat and memories weighing on me. I considered finding those flowers the bonding experience that had opened the doors for all the friendship that had grown between us all since.

And now, the heat wave stifled everything, and all I felt was saturated with heat and sweat and waiting. To see what would happen next.

Whether they would accept me again, as they had before. As they had the flowers with their imperfect beauty.

I jumped when the phone jangled and buzzed beside me. It suddenly brought all the sounds of the fan and the breeze outside and my breath back into focus in my mind.

When I answered I heard their laughter, all jammed together through the microphone, happy and normal. Inviting me over to hang out, wondering why I wasn’t there yet.

Because those plans had been made before the heat wave. Before my confession, the letting go of my secret. The timing and schedule had made everything go so quiet, I wasn’t sure if I was still supposed to go.

The smile spread across my face, and when I moved to grab my backpack and shove on my sandals, the sweat that had stuck to my back freed itself and rolled down. It felt somehow strangely freeing for it to roll down my back so briskly, leaving behind a trail of slightly cooler skin.

I shove my phone in my pocket as I hop toward the door with my half donned shoes dangling from my feet. Everything was going to be alright this time. Either way I would survive, heat wave or not, but everything would be great this time. I was accepted again, and it was great.

Though, I was never going to come out before a heat wave again.

Today is a very important day.

The entire institution comes together today to take pictures, to show our progress off to the rest of the world. To show them we’re happy and cooperative and making great bounds in terms of personal growth.

Today is a very important day.

Today is not a very happy day.

Nothing is outright banned. No one is outright turned away or told they can’t wear whatever they’re wearing.

But the subtle comments, the half hidden snide remarks. The quiet shaming, the judgmental looks. The notes about what civilized and sophisticated, respectable, professional, look like.

Contradictions abound between each comment and look.

So it is not a very happy day.

For everyone who has ever tried to be the one that doesn’t get looks directed at them, who doesn’t want to hear the edge of a snarky comment.

Others it is far more neutral of a day, because they have the ability to not care so much about what any of the administrators of the institution care about how they’re looking and dressing for the pictures.

Somewhere in between the ones who care because they do or they must, and those who don’t because they don’t have to, there are those who work against the grain on purpose. Whether they can afford to or not, they make their statements where they can.

They are the rebellion.

The rebellion looks like rainbow socks peaking out from beneath ironed black slacks, it looks like a brightly colored braided rope bracelet instead of a plain silver faced watch with a plain brown leather strap. It looks like a lower neckline each year. It looks like a skirt that comes in just shorter than regulation. It looks like the edge of an exposed tattoo. It looks like hair pulled back in a ponytail to expose the dyed hair shaved into a brilliant mosaic pattern. It looks like pride suspenders hidden underneath a dress coat.

The rebellion is subtle. Maybe no one on the outside will notice. Likely the administrators won’t notice, or won’t notice the pattern until they’re looking at the pictures that make up the day. It will irritate them when they notice, they will worry that people on the outside will notice and wonder or retaliate.

The rebellion is progress of ideal tucked gently under the edge of someone’s cuff or hidden quietly between the folds of a robe, waiting for the time it can be flown and exposed so proudly.

It’s slow so they won’t notice till it’s taken over, until it’s too late.

Rebellion is subtle.

It looks like the quiet girl dressed meticulously in all black professional clothing. The ironed slacks and button up shirt fastened with a fastidious black on black striped tie tucked into a smooth and wrinkle free vest. Her hair up in a sharp bun with not a single flyaway hair escaping. Her shoes smooth and black, with a tiny heel that might thud lightly upon the heavily carpeted halls that lead to the pictures.

Her rebellion is subtle. It looks like a sweeping, perfectly clean and buttoned trenchcoat that flows around her from her shoulders to her ankles as she casually joins the line.

It looks like taking a moment to remove her trenchcoat for her picture, apologizing quietly for the slight disruption, her back turned to the camera for a moment. It looks like turning around to reveal a highly realistically detailed bright neon strap-on worn over the ironed black slacks, thrusting suggestively toward the camera. Greeting the shock and surprise of the administrators evermore cheerfully –

 

 

Today is a very important day.

Today is rebellion day. Rebellion is subtle.

This series of fiction letters were written in response to discussion and mid quarter self evaluation assignment, and were included in my mid quarter self evaluation packet, but I thought I would share them here as well. This is a series of three fictionalized communications from a character to different people, highlighting how past experiences, perspective, and circumstance change experiences and change how people recount those experiences. Some of it comes from my the feeling I have myself that I can talk a lot about what happened and how it happened and why it happened and how it connects to all the other things that happen, but I can’t create, in a sense, a unified theory that can be used to formulate what actions should be taken to address what happens. (This ‘happening’ could be anything from a protest to a personal event to a program lecture, it doesn’t reference any particular event.)

Hello,

I hope your week is going well, and hasn’t been too busy.

I’m sorry it’s taken a few days to get back to you about some of the incidents, it’s been a really busy scramble to put together all the pieces and really reflect in a constructive way.

Devlin and I have been in discussion about what we want to do in terms of a teach back or a discussion panel. We have set up a meeting with everyone and we’re going to discuss what kind of program in response we want to have, and what kind of discussions we’ll have, but of course whatever we do, we want to take as many people into consideration as possible.

We’ll come to you when we have a plan, and then you can have some feedback, but I still want this to be primarily driven by the people affected, the people who saw the incidents and events.

It needs to be driven by those people.

We will do our best to work with your feedback and contributions.

I hope these terms are acceptable. If needed, we can set up a time for our group to discuss with your office, if further compromise is necessary. I am hoping it will not be.

Thank you for your time,

Farah Emilo.

This series of fiction letters were written in response to discussion and mid quarter self evaluation assignment, and were included in my mid quarter self evaluation packet, but I thought I would share them here as well. This is a series of three fictionalized communications from a character to different people, highlighting how past experiences, perspective, and circumstance change experiences and change how people recount those experiences. Some of it comes from my the feeling I have myself that I can talk a lot about what happened and how it happened and why it happened and how it connects to all the other things that happen, but I can’t create, in a sense, a unified theory that can be used to formulate what actions should be taken to address what happens. (This ‘happening’ could be anything from a protest to a personal event to a program lecture, it doesn’t reference any particular event.)

Devlin,

We need to have a discussion about how we’re responding to the experiences we’ve had over the last week.

You said that you were putting together a time to meet and discuss and decompress. Do you have an idea when that’s happening? I can start disseminating info whenever you need.

If we decide to do a teach back or take an official stance, I think a good format might be a panel or a discussion time. Maybe some pre-determined questions we can answer, and then some audience questions.

If we want to take an official stance, it’s going to have to be very carefully phrased. We need to make sure we have a distinct difference between what we’re saying from our personal experience and position, and what we’ve decided to state as a group that represents as many of our true opinions and experiences and universal agreement as possible. And that’s gonna be a real long discussion to figure everything out and make sure everyone can agree with what we have, and get as much feedback and as much validation of everyone’s experiences as possible.

It needs to be a good chunk of time, maybe it should be two sessions to figure it out if we wanted to take an official stance.

Let me know what you want to happen, and feel free to bounce any ideas at all off me.

– Farah.

This series of fiction letters were written in response to discussion and mid quarter self evaluation assignment, and were included in my mid quarter self evaluation packet, but I thought I would share them here as well. This is a series of three fictionalized communications from a character to different people, highlighting how past experiences, perspective, and circumstance change experiences and change how people recount those experiences. Some of it comes from my the feeling I have myself that I can talk a lot about what happened and how it happened and why it happened and how it connects to all the other things that happen, but I can’t create, in a sense, a unified theory that can be used to formulate what actions should be taken to address what happens. (This ‘happening’ could be anything from a protest to a personal event to a program lecture, it doesn’t reference any particular event.)

Hannah Baby,

How is your wrist? I heard from Mackie that you hurt it, was it really from playing Go Whistle? How did you manage that?

I’ve got a lot to tell you this week, a lot’s happened here. A lot to go over. There’s been so many events they seem to blend together, and it’s only been a week. I know I must’ve said that every week these past two months, but it always seems true.

They grabbed the mic from their hands. They were told it was assault. They said it wasn’t the right time that it wasn’t their place they told them to go away. Their words weren’t welcome here. They were accused of having a knife. They were told the mic wasn’t on later, that it couldn’t be used, but it probably just meant no one wanted to take the chance it would happen again. Only a few people stayed, only a few people listened, and out of those who listened, only few talked about their meaning. Most talked about the way they said what they wanted.

Should they have taken the mic? Should they have been so aggressive? They should’ve followed procedure, of course, protests must follow procedure.

All of that happened, or it didn’t. It depends on who you ask, now.

It’s really frustrating. Even if I haven’t been to all the events, I could tell you everything that happened, or nothing that happened at the same time. Each time, the same words go around. The same words, the same rhetoric. It’s always around the politics of who has the microphone, and it’s little wonder, the microphone is a source of power. It physically gives peoples’ voices the volume to carry to many people. Who has the mic, who has the power to turn it off, or on, the dynamics of that relationship is incredibly important and pivotal in so many of the things that have happened this week.

The protest will be dismissed because of it’s methods, but when the correct methods are used, the protest is ignored.

I wish they talked about the content. It’s so hard, to figure out how to deal with what methods to take, what outcomes to hold out for and what increments to take. I wish we could discuss things, and have conversations that didn’t dissolve into name calling and arguing over semantics or definitions or blaming each other person and rehashing every mistake anyone has ever made, instead of trying to find progress and what forward is.

It’s so frustrating to be around, but even when there’s so much doubt and hurriedness, pain and triggering retrauma, there is some generative aspects. With the first pieces of doubt, pain and trauma, it’s hard to find the generative parts, or be able to take advantage of it when it happens.

I am lucky and I am distanced.

I am grateful and I wish I could more fully understand at the same time.

I am very glad you are not here. I’m glad that your place hasn’t been touched by the upheaval, that your community already joined together to support and drive away the disconnect between its people. I’m so glad. I hope I can join you as soon as I’m done here.

You are so good to me, for letting me rant to you and tell you these things. I appreciate you and your presence.

I hope your wrist heals soon, and tell Juno I saw one of their artworks in the museum a few days ago.

With love,

F.

Update: Author’s note: I have been made away that tomb and tome are spelled differently. In this piece, tomb is meant to mean tome, and I may go and change the words to the correct ones at some point. At the this time, it amuses me a bit that the words are off, and it fits well enough that I am not worried about changing the words now. I am considering it an artifact of writing.

 

The ornately decorated tomb is ages old. Only the finest artists across the lands have been allowed to add their wisdom, their art, a little bit of their essence.

The workbench placed in the middle of the wide, vaulted room, is sturdy and heavy. It might’ve been made to hold the book itself on its creation. The room is cased in the finest marble, polished carefully each day. The windows in the walls have been carefully placed to light the tomb, but not touch it. Every tiny piece of the room, the building even, was formulated to take the most care in preserving, protecting, and displaying the tomb.

The workbench it’s placed on is solid, wide, and built to sustain always. It’s surface is stained deeply with the years of ink, blood, and tears that the artists who created the tomb shed onto its course grain. There are scratches in some places, some look almost like doodles, or finely done practices of the cuts or marks left on the tomb itself.

The stain of the wood sets a contrast against the clean, careful, shining marble. The rough grains seem unruly against the smooth surfaces in the room, but it demands its space and the respect of the walls, of the light that casts itself so delicately around the tomb and the table. When the light touches the bench it seems to diffuse, as if it’s not worthy of touching the most precious tomb of the people. The bench demands respect and deference. The light obliges carefully.

Those who enter the room are struck silent at the deep contrasts and textures so carefully engineered around them.

The cover of the tomb is finely tooled leather. It’s soft and supple, but its toughness has withstood countless years and additions. The marks it bears are the signatures of hundreds and thousands of artists determined the most skillful, respected, talented, and cherished of their time. Each twist, sharp stop, and point is purposeful, intentioned, and exquisitely planned.

The slightly worn layer of leather placed over the cover that makes up its title is crooked, and scholars have wondered upon their careers and lives why it was chosen to be placed ever so slightly crooked.

The words that roll across the most important book in the world’s cover tell you it is the Legends of Yore.

If you were to turn through the pages, you would find the most exquisite sketches, paintings, writings, and philosophical historic moments captured forever within the crisp thin pages within the tomb.

The fantastic beasts of other worlds have been scrolled in precious inks. Forests and flowers and birds and creatures of the sky, land, and sea, have been cataloged here. Music notes and moments have been etched into the corners of poetry and plays that were scripted in exquisite calligraphy. The most important leaders and humanitarians have been frozen in paint that has been finely cracked and faded over the years, only adding to the special scarcity and ethereal beauty.

The Legends of Yore have only been allowed to the unique, perfectly talented, and most precious artists, historians, philosophers, and writers. Only those deemed most worthy have been given the gift of being able to lay their hands on the tomb, to lay their hands on the tomb and create a moment of art from themselves within its pages, to sign the cover and kiss the spine. It would be their most treasured, most beautiful work of art, their masterpiece, and it would be kept for as long as time would possibly allow.

And if you look very closely on back corner, you can see the note of an artist. Deemed respected, cherished, talented, and precious to the people.

Allowed the gift to add work to the beautiful tomb, to the legends and the history of the best of the best of all around.

A few hundred years after this artist’s contribution, a historian will find a note in a barely recognizable, only faintly intact journal bound in rough leather and scrawled in cheap ink a note from the artist:

I don’t know how they decided on me. Thousands of years they chose only those who deserved it, and they knew who deserved by who cherished the opportunity, neigh the gift. So I don’t know why they chose me. I am ornery and my only wish left in this world is to be left alone with my art. And yet I am burdened now with this responsibility. I have only one recourse, as the frustrated and somehow accidentally revered curmudgeon.

The historian, confused, searched for years, as the journal gave no further clues what was meant by the artist’s words. Through the histories of the time, the studies of other’s, the studies of the language and culture, and of all the art held within the book.

Finally, the historian noticed a very tiny mark near the top right corner of the last word of the tomb’s title, etched carefully in the worn leather. After research, it was found to be an asterisk, and thus the historian is credited with finding the single most astounding moment of art in the entire tomb. For inscribed in tiny, perfect letters in the corner of the back cover, amongst the signatures of past artists, is the contribution of the frustrated and somehow accidentally revered curmudgeon, marked by a tiny, matching, asterisk.

The Legends of Yore*

*Dick.