Tween
You aren't for the Heavens yet
But no longer for the Earth either.
The goal of your existence unmet;
Your experiences, no more wiser.
But don't look back on the barren
Discarded, decaying garden of hope.
The branches of love now fallen
And romances on a slippery slope.
For when it's the day of Death
We move on to worlds apart.
So, don't waste another breath
And no longer take things to heart.
Gray
In the dim light of a forgotten alley, I stumbled upon a figure shrouded in mist. The air was thick with an otherworldly heaviness, and I felt an unshakable pull to approach. It was then that I realized: this wasn’t just a trick of the light; this was a spirit, trapped in limbo.
“Are you here to help me?” the spirit whispered, its voice barely a sigh in the stillness.
“I… I don’t know how,” I replied, my heart pounding. I had come to this city searching for something—answers, solace, or perhaps just an escape from my own turmoil. I never expected to find a soul in need.
“I’ve been here too long,” it continued, its form flickering like an old film reel. “I linger between worlds, caught in the memories of my life. I can’t move on.”
“What keeps you here?” I asked, my curiosity mixing with empathy. The spirit seemed both fragile and weighty, a paradox of existence.
“I was… forgotten,” it said, eyes shimmering like distant stars. “I lost my way when my family abandoned me. They didn’t understand. They left me behind, and I couldn’t let go of the pain.”
The revelation struck me hard. I too had felt abandoned, left to navigate my own labyrinth of grief and regret. I thought of my own family—how my father’s departure had cast shadows on every corner of my life. I stood there, frozen, connected by our shared experiences of loss.
“Maybe you need to forgive them,” I suggested, my voice steadying as I felt a surge of determination. “Or maybe you need to forgive yourself. Sometimes the past holds us captive.”
The spirit hesitated, and for a moment, I could see the flicker of hope in its ethereal gaze. “Forgiveness… It feels impossible.”
“Maybe it starts small,” I encouraged. “A single thought, a moment of understanding. You were not meant to carry their choices forever. Your life was your own, and you deserve to let go.”
“I don’t know how,” it whispered, sorrow folding around it like a cloak.
“Just try,” I said, my voice growing stronger. “Imagine them free, living their lives. Imagine yourself free, too. What would that look like?”
For a long, haunting moment, the spirit stood silent. I watched as it seemed to wrestle with the weight of its memories, eyes searching the void. The mist around it began to shimmer, and a soft glow emerged from within.
“I remember… the laughter,” it said slowly. “The way the sun felt on my skin. I remember love.”
The fog thickened, but instead of trapping it, the mist began to lift. I felt a rush of warmth as the spirit smiled, a bittersweet expression of release.
“Thank you,” it breathed, voice barely audible above the rustle of the wind. “I think… I can finally let go.”
With that, the spirit transformed, its essence dissolving into brilliant light that danced and spiraled upward. It shimmered like a thousand fireflies before bursting into a constellation of sparkles, vanishing into the night sky.
I stood alone in the alley, the air lighter somehow, filled with a sense of peace. I thought of the spirit’s journey, of how it had found a way to rise above its pain. In that moment, I realized that maybe I, too, could learn from this encounter. Maybe I could forgive the ghosts that lingered in my own heart, the burdens I carried.
As I walked away from that forgotten place, I felt a newfound determination swell within me. The grey area of my existence, once heavy with shadows, began to shift—blurring the lines between past and future, sorrow and hope. In that alley, I had encountered not just a spirit, but a mirror reflecting my own path toward freedom.
Gray
I find myself
stuck all day
the sun may shine
but i see gray;
there are no colors
there's barely light
darkness surrounds
although it's not night;
heavy and slow
i drag around
air so heavy
i feel i may drown,
in tears like rain
that blurs and clouds
grayscale watercolor
that cloaks and shrouds,
hides yellows, greens and blues,
holds reds and oranges at bay
no purples, no pinks, no joyful hues,
forever and always, only gray.
In the Microscope
We looked closely...
having struck dynamo
an excitement scientific
among all the laboratorian
Aha...finally! a spirit
stuck...
in slide!!
an authentic sampling
cross section, aye
between glass
its parts wriggling
and jiggling
we see turning around
as little space allows
for what seem
like hands
face, feet!
a nose it has
elbows and
it kneels
it kneels!
deaf and mute
and we are also
in the microscope
gapping...
dumbstruck
09.17.2024
Grey area challenge @AJAY9979
Letting Go
He walked past her again. It almost felt like he was walking through her. She cried out to him, begged him to stop, but this was going to be another day of the silent treatment.
He slammed the door and headed to work. She stood at the window, watching him back away down the driveway in his new truck. He refused to talk to her about the purchase; he just showed up one day several weeks ago, the dealer sticker still in the window.
He hadn't spoken to her in over a month.
She looked out at the neighborhood. It had gotten to be fall without her even realizing that the weather had cooled. Leaves gathered in silent blankets, warming the earth.
She felt a chill, and went back to bed.
______________
She'd been sleeping more, lately. It was unusual for her, but she'd somehow slipped into a deeper darkness than she'd ever experienced. She'd been depressed before, but this was different; black days didn't begin to describe it. She'd sleep, she'd awaken. He'd ignore her as they watched television, when she actually joined him downstairs.
Most nights, he'd fall asleep on the couch, a highball glass with remnants of an ice cube giving testimony to how he'd spent another one of his evenings. The empty Glenlivet bottles were lined up in a windowsill.
The ghostly green was absurdly beautiful in the setting sun.
One night, seized with a frustration that words wouldn't cure, she grabbed one of those empties and flung it at the wall.
Finally, he looked in her direction, eyes bleary, a gasp on his lips and a trembling tumbler in his hand.
A rorschach of whiskeystains colored the offwhite sheetrock. Little divots formed where the bottle struck and shattered; verdant shards rained to the hardwood. A glass garden bloomed on the kitchen floor.
She didn't speak, but wailed tears of sorrow, anger, and sadness.
She was angry at mourning the loss of the two of them; she was angrier at his apparent lack of concern for their love slipping away.
He just looked at that rorsharch on the wall. A study of himself, painted in single malt.
She went back upstairs, crying herself to sleep.
______________
Winter came, and nothing improved between them. He started missing work some days, and those bottles began to line the floor beneath the window.
She refused to clean up after him.
She sat down in the chair opposite the couch one day when he slept past his alarm. She reached out to turn off the television, but it smoked and smouldered under her fingertips, and it died on its own. She snatched her hand back, expecting a shock, but she felt nothing. Where it had been blasting on about some winter storm on the Weather Channel, now there was only silence and the smell of ozone.
She just sighed.
One more thing gone wrong.
She tried to wake him, but he wouldn't stir.
She couldn't remember the last time he'd slept in the bed with her. His only trips upstairs were to dress, and even those stopped when he moved everything he needed into the guestroom.
She was a heavy sleeper, and the depression she'd slunk into forced her to stay in bed most days.
"We need help, babe." She said, hoping he'd engage her.
He just rolled over, curled away from her, shivered, and continued to sleep on the couch.
"I'm going to leave if we don't try to fix this."
Nothing. He reached for his blanket on the back of the couch, still sleeping.
She knew it was a lie. Despite all this darkness, she loved him still.
______________
Time was a slippery thing to her in her depressions.
When the snow began to melt, the man from the bank came. She refused to open the door, but looked out the peephole at him. He left an orange flyer above the knocker.
She went back to sleep, and the tears took away the worry.
She awakened to the ear-splitting noise of reversing alarms on a truck.
A Uhaul sat in the front yard, but she was too tired, too sad, to care anymore.
She slept again.
______________
When she awakened, everything in the house outside of her bedroom was gone. Echoes greeted her creaking steps down the stairs, and she cried out in fear, in shock, and in such incredible, aching remorse that she felt her heart shatter just as a windowpane above the kitchen sink did.
He'd left her bedroom, and moved out around her.
She collapsed in the living room in a heap, wails filling the air and blackness coloring her world.
______________
She felt like she was being torn apart.
Sleep disappeared, and dreams were replaced with the sound of Latin being spoken downstairs.
Latin?
It echoed throughout the emptiness of the house below her. Inside, she ached. Physical pain tore through her, and she screamed, despite trying to listen.
The Latin stopped, and the clinching in her gut relaxed.
She stumbled to the stairway, and looked down into the living room.
Strangers gathered, surrounding a priest.
He looked at her.
At her. He smiled.
It was the first real contact she'd had since...
And memory flooded her.
______________
Images of she and her husband.
He was driving, she was holding his hand.
They were just going to the store; a beautifully mundane ritual.
He said something and she laughed.
And then it happened.
______________
The priest spoke to her.
"Hello, Melanie."
She didn't reply.
"These are the Murchisons. They own this house now. They asked me to bless it before they move your bedroom out, and they move their family in."
"Mine," she managed to croak, tears flowing.
She noticed the couple cringe, and the man, Mr. Murchison, she presumed, shivered. They were young; they reminded of her of how she and her husband looked back when.
"GET OUT!" she managed to yell, voice cracking through tears.
The young woman began to cry.
The priest just continued to smile, and he took a step closer.
"Melanie. You need to go Home. You need to let go of this place."
The Latin resumed, and the last thing she heard:
"Go with God, Melanie."
"Amen."
And she let go.
The house disappeared from around her, and sadness was a distant whisper.
______________
A tractor trailer blew through the red light.
It hit the passenger side of the car at somewhere around fifty miles an hour.
As the noise died away, so did she.
You there!
Yes you!
Misting up my hallway,
Moaning all hours of the night!
Stomping and scatching and
scaring the bejeebers outa my kids!
Well you can just stop it right now!
I have had it up to here with all your creepy, crapy cryin and so on!
You've had your little fun but if you dont walk into the light right now, so help me im gonna call out the Hell hounds and have them rip you a new hole in your "sheet"!
Now i mean it! Trust me when I say
"Hell hath no fury like a mother who had no sleep!"
So get into the light or face my wrath!
Through the Gray
I see you lurking in my dreams
Stuck between, neither here nor there
What is it you need?
What question should I heed?
What do I say to send you on your way?
You seem so sad, even a bit mad.
Behind grey fog, no, maybe even smog
Broken, of course, you could not stay
You did not need to go
I forgive you, you know
For all the reasons you thought were good
For actions beyond your iron control
For the hurts and pain
And your total distain
Because you are not who once you were
Go! Peace be with you
You’ve earned the right to respect this life
And if by chance our souls should meet once more
I’ll love you still
I always will