It Was Not Yours

It was not yours, the night breathed old onto your cold new skin,
It was mine, the moon shone in my created eye.

I knew how you would feel, selfish and divine,

new, believing it was yours alone to love.

You spoke outward, voice caressed atop the harsh waves,

crashing onto jagged rock, broken bones of my battered body. 

I floated away on the salted grave you sang, then stopped,

spread out on the mountain meeting the moon, I let light melt from my heart. 

Life reaped, pooled and poured, your finger depressed a print on the sand,
a strange being to forge life from ruins of death in the depth of all. 

You were mine. Alive. I swallowed your lies whole until only hollow love remained,
echoing, yearning. But you were mine. 

The Peculiar Girl and the Wood Table

Gnarly wood with knots and holes, divots and rings in shades of pale sand to roasted walnuts ran smoothly under Stay’s finger tips. Her porcelain finger caught in a deeper groove before jumping back on track with the rest of her hand lazily tracing the ancient lines. The wood table appeared roughly made; wide, uneven patches of wood set together with pegs, the grains not matching as her eyes jumped from one panel to another. Stay could only assume her mother, or possibly the father she never knew, had made it before she was born. Sitting strong in the center of the kitchen, the table had always held what was post important: a place to fold cranes, to build cakes and skin rabbits. She had bled onto the table, coffee rings almost created a pattern like a dream catcher created filigree along the edges. Gouges in the wood from an angry knife stabbed deep while shallower points were created to hold the blade in thought.

Stay imagined the wood holding onto her memories.  With no mother, father or people to remember or create memories with her, the table was the only one she could imagine capable. Once a living thing, growing strong and tall, reaching for the sky in an endless craving for life, it understood.

Reminiscent and in need of a friend, Stay brought out her old friends. The porcupine bones were still tied together with string being held together like puppets ready to dance and run with her. Stay admired the contrast as she set the bones on the wood table. Smooth creamy bones against rough woods. The combination screamed time and life at her, life gone and time always going. The tree had grown into the earth, sinking roots into the ground while branches spread into the sky. Bones of the porcupine held the life and structure of the animal while the beast remained unaware of its skeleton, the only part of the creature left. The wood and the bones would continue to live on in death, time deepening what they once were. Everything was backwards. The tree and porcupine they were dead but in death remained alive forever, they held age as time went on. Both so beautiful and so different.

Stay craved immortality in bones.

She imagined her body lying on the long kitchen table. Her form slowly decomposing and the wood soaking up what it could of her body, allowing her soul and essence to become part of the world until years drift by and it would only be her bones left on the table. Creamy, slender and elegant cradled by the table, her small bony fingers settling in the grooves of the wood, her skull pitched back to rest along a worn knot in ecstasy.

Stay rubbed the back of her head, feeling the gentle curve of her skull bend in toward her spine, the delicate balance of her entire being resting at that pivotal point. She couldn’t help wonder at how easy it would be.

Standing up and pushing away from the table, Stay shoves those thoughts away. Thinking of life and death and the potential immortality of death is dangerous. Though she never knew what happened to her mother for certain, she felt it in the center of her heart; her mother was dead.

Stay’s mother had problems. One of the comforting things Stay read in her many books was every single person had a multitude of problems. They could have problems that were solved but created new problems, problems that followed them through life and problems they never even know they had. That was the kind of problem Stay’s mother had. The kind of problem that ate away at her happiness and told her she wasn’t ok the way she was until she didn’t know how to feel. She thought the only way she could feel normal again was through pain. Stay had seen the scars forming on her mother’s arms and peeking under the hem of her shorts on her thighs.

The life left her eyes until she looked at Stay with nothing buy greyness. There were moments when Stay thought she was ok again, when her mother would fold cranes and line them on the sill in the kitchen, she would bake a strawberry tart and dust it with powdered sugar, blowing it like a cloud over the table and smiling through the cloud at Stay. The times of momentary rightness were quickly shadowed by hours, sometimes days, of stagnation. Her mother would sit in the living room staring out the window, barely moving. No more cuts, only staring into the woods as if waiting for something. Was she waiting for Stay’s father to return? Was she waiting for a reason to live?

Her mother had a problem she didn’t know she had and she couldn’t fix it. Pills might have helped her. There was a pharmacy in town and an old, kind doctor Stay saw once as a child when she had a fever. But, her mother didn’t go. She went to the market and bought food and other necessities as if she could bake it all away.

Now Stay glared at the table that held the confections of her mother’s love. The table that taunted her with life and death, making a mockery out of all Stay knew. The table soaked in their life and love and acted like its support was enough to give in return. Did it keep her mother alive? Did the hard-hearted table stop Stay’s mother from hurting herself? Did it offer support when Stay cut her finger off? Perhaps 18 years with this table was enough, maybe it was time for her to move on from the problems of her mother and make this home her own.

 Stay wanted to stay alive. The table sucked the life out of her. It would stand like an unmoving stone as a constant reminder of the pain her mother held, making it her own. It would cut at her heart making her wonder at her father and hold resentment toward her mother.

The house had an unused landline she could dust off to call information and get a technician to install internet. Then buy an old laptop from the resale shop and purchase a new table online. Stay wouldn't have to leave the house often. She could remake the home she had into anything she wanted, a Parisian coffee shop or a Buddhist temple.

With the decision made, Stay took her porcupine pals and hung them from a hook above the kitchen window. Opening the window allowed a breeze to pulsate through, the bones becoming chimes as they gently knocked on one another like laughter.

The table would have to go.

© Ash Huntley

3/642 Things to Write About

Tell a story that beings with a ransom note:

"You have 24 hours to give us $10 in pennies, or your penguin gets it"
Written with individual magazine letters accompanied with a picture of the 3 foot tall light up plastic penguin my father kept outside, wrapped in rope and duct tape. This is what I came home to from school in the winter of 2002 when I was in 7th grade. My father's peaceful penguin was taken by my older brother's friends. A fun prank that sparked a something in me. A wish to have many friends and them doing clever silly things.

I was recently post-thyroid treatment, it had been less than a year since I had my 'problem'. I had lost all of my friends, a lot of weight, and a good deal of my hair. I still felt alone and abandoned, though making amends. I dreamed of the future - a mature teenager, skinny again (I gained nearly 50 pounds after my thyroid was destroyed), with true friends and an understanding of who I was going to become.

I was never angry at what happened to me, only angry at how others treated me for it. Not my family - they were the only ones there for me, taking care of me, loving me. It was how my friends treated me, or at that point, lack of friends. Teachers treated me horribly, I failed every class in the 6th grade. I should of been held back, but my parent's wouldn't let it happen. I had ADD in a different form, when they gave me riddlin it made my condition worse. I don't remember most of that year, but I excelled in academics afterwards. I looked to a time where it would be forgotten, where I could make up for my illness and know who I was. At 12, I was lost.

I always wanted silly, simple adventures such as 'The Penguin Incident' to happen to me, something my family would always remember and smile on. I'm still learning thought, you can never plan or predict such moments. I will always be my own person with my own friends. I can't push for adventures unless I go out there and live. Being me isn't easy, being anyone isn't. Living is hard work, and that's ok, as long as we know it and work at it. I believe this is our one life, we shouldn't live it in fear.

Most regret comes from the regret of not doing something, rather than doing something. I always try to remember that. Do more things, try more things. Live.

Remember the penguin.

© Ash Huntley