scattered and disorganized

I am,

but I like to call it

poetic,

the likes of e.e. cummings and William Faulkner,

I remember when I screamed and got sent to timeout

because I wasn’t allowed to end my story with a cliffhanger

but instead was forced to write

“And that was what I did over the weekend”

in big ugly reluctant letters

at the bottom of the wide-ruled notebook page.

Writing a story

is like making a wrap.

You need a conclusion

to roll it all up.

but what if I want

an open-faced burrito

with all the fillings

spilling out from over the sides?

and what if I want

to pick out the shredded-lettuce transition words

of “therefore” and “in conclusion”

and the diced-tomato topic sentences

and must-be-three-paragraph rules,

because I don’t like my vegetables,

especially not the stale and soggy ones

that we must use in every wrap?

There’s only one way

to make a wrap.

If you look at the rubric,

it tells you what to write,

and how to write it.

but the rubric says to “express myself,”

and how do I do that,

how do I become Dickens and Tolstoy

with their two-hundred-word-long sentences

when run-on phrases are the equivalents

of rotten chicken and moldy cheese?

They can break the rules

because they’re very good.

but what if I want

to be just like them,

do I have to fold my burritos

by the only recipe that the

writing rubric gives me?

Yes. Because you’re just learning and

you’re not very good yet.

but when can I be

good enough to

try a different flavor?

I don’t know, but it’s

certainly not today.

and the little wooden craft stick

with my name on it

gets moved from the green jar to the yellow jar

for bad behavior.

I keep quiet, because

even eating the same stale burrito

every day of second grade

is better than the red jar.

we were

supposed to

intertwine, fall

into each

other like

the north and

south magnetic poles.

you were

supposed to

wrap your

arms around me,

slowly draw me

close, like two

curlicues of

charred wood,

coiling and

interlacing and

melting into

one.

i was

supposed to

lean into your

tender touch,

close my

eyes and

tilt just to

the right,

inhale your

gentle scent,

crisp white linen.

it was

supposed to

be flawless,

breathless, life-

changing, spark

an instant and

eternal connection,

why didn’t you

rest your

lips on mine,

steal the

breath from the

tip of my

tongue, expel

the old

life from me?

we were

supposed to

taste each

other, devour the

moment like a

delicacy. but

instead, our

first kiss

was nothing but

a touch of two

misshapen nodules of

swollen pink flesh

and the hot

stickiness of

sour coffee breath.

crimson.

she was bright carmine,

burning scarlet,

the kind that makes

you stop and look and

turn and think-

this is pure,

this is vibrant,

this is emotion;

the color of

her heart, all

the rich

passion bleeding through.

crimson.

red.

maybe it wasn’t

crimson, but it

was red,

deep and true and

real and right.

the color of

her heart- not

the crimson inside but

just the outside,

the shell of

who she was.

red.

magenta.

she was slowly

fading into labels of

pink and flowery and

fragile and girl;

she took her crimson and

her carmine and

her red and

made it what

they wanted to see,

sliding into the

niche they had

set for her.

magenta.

carnation.

she changed not

only her color but

her title too; sacrificed

her identity for

a crayon color,

the kind that comes

in every Crayola

twelve-box.

carnation.

rose.

she couldn’t be

exquisite carnation, so

she chose the commoners’

bouquet, beautiful

but pale and limp and

wilted at the edges;

let her petals

peel away-

he loves me, he

loves me not.

rose.

grey.

she was eroding away

at what little

was left of

her color, as if

pale rose

just wasn’t

blanched enough.

she was cool

grey now, wispy

ghost-like wraiths of

feeble life.

grey.

white.

bleached like a

wedding dress,

with a kind of

faded, dusty elegance,

like a jewel, tarnished

with time, a

girl who had

lost her luster

long ago,

vacant,

barren,

empty,

colorless,

white.

nothing.

nothing.

we’re just sailboats, aren’t we,

two rickety brown dots

lost in the vast blue,

drifting

ever further

apart,

no matter

how far

we reach,

lean over

the edge and

yearn for

the touch

of the

other.

our love is just

a message in a bottle, isn’t it,

one bobbing speck

that rides

the waves

like the birds do,

the only one

that doesn’t

soar but

sinks instead,

water seeping

through the

cracks; broken

glass blossoms,

petals that

unfurl and

wilt,

twist and

flutter away

into the

deep,

deep blue.

in the end, we

were just pollution, weren’t we,

salt-tainted spatters of parchment,

floating far

beneath the

waves, where

no light illuminates

the ribbon

I tied

round the

rolled-up scroll

before sending

the bottle

to sea,

or the

way I

crossed

my O

when I wrote,

Love.

all that’s

left of

us is

the ink

of my

fountain pen,

bleeding into

the murky

depths,

black text

billowing in

wisps

off the

sea-soaked page,

curling like

smoke and

ebbing with

the Atlantic

drift.

through my sleepless haze

my eyes catch your silhouette.

i lunge for you, seized

by a seismic jolt of want;

i grope and grasp for you

even though you aren’t there;

i crave, i pine, i yearn.

if only you knew

how every part of me protests,

how my chest sighs,

for the thought of you clings

to my already-heavy heart,

how my shuddering lungs scream,

for with every breath i take

you snatch the air from me.

no euphoria is this destructive.

you wrap me in your deadly embrace,

stroke a finger down my throat.

it’s inexplicably exhilarating,

yet i wonder

as i thrash and writhe from the pain,

why i wander whole worlds for you

just to sink into your sweet poison,

the blissful agony of your touch.

just one, one more time.

the last, the last time.

The night is silent;

the crickets in a hushed quiet;

the wind holds its breath;

there’s an echo in the ebony air,

an echo of nothing,

an echo of everything.

I lay a tired hand

upon the sturdiest tree,

follow my eyes up the trunk.

A noose hangs from the lowest branch,

as silent as the night itself,

yet there’s an air of mystery

lurking around it,

the kind that gives you courage,

the kind that gives you fear.

I step up on the boulder,

look straight into the eye of the noose;

the air is strangely hazy,

as if there’s a different world

lying on the other side-

the one I so long to enter.

I pull the noose around my head,

slide the knot tight to the nape of my neck,

feeling the rope stretched taut against my skin.

I am fearless,

I am afraid.

I kick away the boulder,

let my body fall limp;

the rope seizes me,

snatching the breath from my lips,

and I scream,

and I thrash,

and I flail,

and the noose slips-

how lucky I am,

how unfortunate.

I fall back to the ground,

back to earth,

gasping,

crying,

cursing myself

for wanting to leave,

for wanting to stay.

This is bravery.

This is cowardice.

You crept up behind me,

blade held high in hand.

I felt your breath on the nape of my neck,

silent but heavily labored;

I could sense all your emotions,

emanating from within you,

folding me in a cold dark curtain-

Hatred.

Hunger.

Fury.

I felt your preying eyes upon me;

I burned in the intensity of your stare.

I heard the swish of your dagger,

as you sliced it, whipping through wind.

I saw the silver glint of your blade

as it pierced into my chest,

and I heard a strangled, inhuman cry

as I fell backwards,

crumpling as the blade sunk into me.

But I was dead before my heart stopped beating,

before my body had hit the ground.

Because when I met your stare,

cruel and unrelenting,

a scene flashed within them,

reflected in your eyes,

and I saw us, so long ago-

we chased each other with premature legs

in the cool damp lawns of summer,

laughing, shouting, smiling.

Years passed since then, but we stayed the same-

always together, always there,

laughing, shouting, smiling.

I relived our childhood in your eyes,

our memories,

our treasures,

our friendship,

but I’m pulled back to the present,

to your eyes

no longer warm and friendly,

but instead harsh and cold.

And I realized in that moment

that your betrayal, your treachery,

was far more lethal a weapon

than your blade could ever be.

And although my body

lies mangled,

misshapen,

stained with blackened blood,

I know

that the true murder took place

not to my body,

but in me.

2016 Scholastic Writing Awards

Northeast Region-at-Large

Gold Key Award

Note: I wrote this for the Scholastic Writings Awards but never shared it with anyone else, out of fear that my writing and plot sounded primitive and childish.  I hope that sharing it here was a good decision.  If not, then...

     She was that janitor- the old one, the crabby one, the one everybody hated. She was the one with cataract-clouded eyes, a squashed nose, and a fine line of a mouth that had long since lost the ability to smile. Her ashen-gray hair, pulled back in a disheveled bun that exposed patches of dirty, mottled scalp, stretched taut the wrinkles in her heavily lined face; her speech was scratchy and hoarse, as if her voice, like her skin, had been tarnished by time. Her back was hunched from an eternal labor, which gave her the appearance of an old witch on Halloween. She was mostly silent- although her presence seemed to bring about an incessant growl- but she often, inexplicably, erupted into vicious tantrums, wrangling with her fellow staff members over paltry matters and sometimes even aiming blows at students who had angered her.

     Custodian was the proper title for her, but of course no one called her that. To students, she was the janitor, a thing both detested and derided among them; to the staff, she was the janitor, a joke, a mistake, something barely worth mentioning except in the satirical jokes of their lounge room.

     Those who had never made the janitor’s acquaintance attempted, at first, to do so, but she never returned their courteous smiles. Nor did she respond to their well-meaning endeavors to strike up polite conversation. As they would all come to learn, there was no “polite” to the janitor, much less a smile. Even the spiders seemed to want rid of her, scattering away as soon as her notorious mop came into sight. Even the dust mites fled in her wake.

     She bent down to reach underneath the tables. Her back screamed and strained, but she barely noticed that anymore. Her hands moved back and forth with the mop, sweeping in a rhythmic motion that had become numbing after all her years. The action had been so deeply etched into her that it felt like a part of her body now. Her face was unchanging as she worked- blank, stony, expressionless- and her eyes seemed to stare without seeing.

     The janitor straightened, hearing a soft snickering from behind. Knowing for sure that it was about her sent a tingling of annoyance like spider silk across her back.

     “Cut that out,” she snapped petulantly. The janitor resumed her cleaning, but the spider web feeling hadn’t subsided. Instead, she could almost feel it intensifying with her every move.

     She let out a raucous yell of surprise when a tall figure rammed into her shoulder. It was much too head-on to be an accident, and besides, years of ridicule made it obvious that she was being mocked. The janitor bit her lip, trying to repress herself, but a vibration was starting up her body, and she felt a rash desire to wring her hands and to throw her head back and scream. It was so hard to rein herself in- she was losing control; she could feel it. Through her blur of temper, she saw the boy chewing on the corner of his own lip, trying to bite back the smirk that the janitor knew was creeping upon it. His friend, standing beside him, was barely hiding a smile.

     The janitor couldn’t stand it any longer. The spider silk had become tendrils of electricity, racing up and down her spine. “You!” she shrieked at the two, completely exploding. “How dare you show such disrespect? Can you not see I am an adult? Would you treat your other teachers that way? No! So why am I different?”

     “I’m sorry, Ma’am,” the boy sang, tipping an imaginary hat to her. “Didn’t see you there.”

     “Yeah, Timmy.” His friend’s voice dripped with false sincerity. “You should watch where you’re going.”

     It was too much for the janitor, too much. All her reason gave way to aggravation. Driven by impulse, she swung her mop in a fierce arc, catching the stunned boy on the shoulder. He and his friend stumbled backward.

     “You’ve earned yourself a one-way ticket to detention, did you know that? Oh, you don’t want it? Don’t think you deserve it, don’t you? Well, I’ll be lenient this time. If you don’t want to spend the rest of your week having lunch with our principal then you two had better get back to where you belong!”

     The boys cast one last spiteful look at her before shuffling away. The janitor tried to convince herself that the incident had made her feel better, but it really hadn’t. She regretted attacking the boy, not for fear of getting in trouble, but because her burst of fury, instead of invigorating her, had drained her, leaving her tired and deprived of energy. Looking back on it, she could no longer see the point of what she had done- all of it now seemed so very futile.

     But then again- these days, what wasn’t futile?

     The heater hummed softly beside her as she knelt in her bedroom corner, clasping her hands together for warmth. The janitor looked down at her palms- hardened and calloused from countless years of labor. She turned them over and saw her knuckles, wrinkled and knobbly from the curse of old age. Experimentally, she lifted a finger and flexed it- once, twice. She lifted another, and another, slowly tapping out a pattern on her knees. An old melody, she realized. An old tune.

     The girl plucks a key- once, twice. She plays another note, and another, and the piano sings under her touch. She can’t be more than a mere child, and the melody is so simple, but somehow every pitch tells a story. Her fingers are long, slender, graceful. Beautiful, her piano teacher tells her. Prodigious. This girl is meant for great things.

     The image faded. The janitor looked at her own decaying hands, and for a moment, the image of the girl’s hands swam before her eyes- tender and delicate and flawless and everything she had ever wanted. Me, she thought, before correcting herself. No. Not me.

     A wave of nostalgia swept over her. She raked her nails across the back of her head; her hair was knotted and grimy to the touch. How long had it been since she had last combed her fingers through smooth hair, those dark-brown locks that were glossy without brushing, that she used to drape down her back like a curtain? How long had it been since she had last laced her feet, now scarred and webbed with discolored veins, in silken pointe shoes.

     Without meaning to, she spoke aloud. Though it was only a whisper, her voice caught in her throat with a raspy, growling sound: “What’s happened? What’s become of me?”

     The janitor sat with her back against the wall. It was well past midnight, but she had no desire to stand up, let alone walk across the room to her bed. She had spent many long, sleepless nights there, staring at the ceiling and waiting for the oblivion of slumber to take her. But today, in that dark corner of her room, with her head bowed toward her chest, sleep found her at last.

     She tiptoes backstage, her feet making soft tapping sounds as she pads across the smooth wooden floor. Another girl, standing near the curtain, beckons her forth, and the first girl quickly treads her way toward her. Together they draw back an edge of the curtain and peer onstage. There’s a hushed quiet in the audience; their heads are bent towards each other in whispered conversations, every syllable echoing in the large theater, but each voice is indistinct, combining with the others in a tense silence, the kind that is muted yet insistent at the same time.

     The two girls let the curtain fall back into place. They converse softly for a moment, and then hug each other empathetically. The first girl’s trembling with anxiety, but she seems to calm a bit as her friend leads her away, her arm around her shoulders, speaking words of encouragement. It’s dark backstage, but a dim light casts the silhouette of her fingers on the red velvet curtain. The same ones. Long, slender, graceful, even more so in the shadow. Beautiful.

     The janitor awoke in a fierce rush of adrenaline. She pulled her hands up to her face and clutched at her cheeks, expecting soft, smooth skin, but it was the same sagging face that she had fallen asleep with. She felt above her cheekbones, but they were the same eye bags that had weighed her down for decades. She ran her finger over the bridge of her nose, traced it across her lips, brushed it underneath her chin, as if grasping at her features could somehow snatch back the girl from her dreams.

     She hid her face with a hand. Her breath reeked of decay and felt sticky on her palm as she exhaled.

     What’s happened? What’s become of me?

     The bathroom smelled like stale urine. The janitor leaned on her mop as one would a walking stick, breathing automatically through her mouth. The floor around her was filthy, speckled with tatters of soggy toilet paper that her mop couldn’t seem to clean up. The grouts of the tiles were cracked and soiled, and the stall doors were etched with obscene words and phrases that only added to the squalid atmosphere.

     She pushed past one of the doors and swept her mop inside. As she bent over the toilet seat, she noticed her reflection in the water, distorted by ripples and mildew. Her features were dirty, disfigured, and painful to look upon. But for just a moment, for just a fraction of a glance, the janitor thought she saw a different face- one that was young, beautiful, dark-lipped and cherry-cheeked from makeup. Then it faded, replaced by her own, as if the other girl had been but a mask that had crumbled away.

     How long had she stood there, staring back at herself? She didn’t know, but the students’ lunch period had started and she could already hear a group of friends entering the bathroom. The door clicked shut behind them as they chattered aimlessly amongst themselves. Upon realizing that the janitor was in their presence, their footsteps shuffled to a tense pause. Their voices faded abruptly. Then one girl, bolder than the rest, resumed conversation and charged forward, with the others following suit. As she passed the janitor’s stall, she thrust a hand out and shoved the stall door into her back.

     The janitor staggered as the lock dug into her side. She would have cried out in surprise, or pain, or both, but her voice was too hoarse. She put a hand on her ribs to assuage the throbbing, putting her weight onto the mop with the other.

     She wanted to turn around and lash out at that girl, to beat her with her mop for daring to disrespect a school staff member. But just as the janitor pushed aside the stall door, preparing to face the offender, something suddenly changed her mind. She swung the door back into place and continued her endless, rhythmic sweeping, consciously keeping her head down. Her eyes were trained on the floor, but she looked past it as if it wasn’t there- she looked at it, but she didn’t look; she couldn’t see. All the while the janitor thought about that girl. On the surface she was still seething over the injustice, but somewhere inside her, she couldn’t make herself feel that way. She couldn’t bring up the energy to be angry at the girl. It wasn’t worth doing, she decided. It just wasn’t.

     The janitor’s face was unchanging as she worked- blank, stony, expressionless- and her eyes stared without seeing. But she kept thinking of the girl who had pushed her. And as she did, the girl from her dreams swam before her vision, like a hologram projected before the grubby tiles. Upon seeing her, there was a pain in the janitor’s chest that she couldn’t identify or describe, but it seemed to come from deep inside her. No, not just inside her. Deeper.

     She didn’t speak the words, but they tumbled forth from her thoughts:

     What’s happened? What’s become of me?

     But the question felt different this time. It was no longer a hopeless plead, or a wail of resentment. A bubble of sadness grew from the pain deep in her chest, expanded- and then burst with a gentle pop. She felt hollow where the bubble had broken, but she felt surprisingly lighter as well. Although she didn’t sense any particular fondness, she realized that she no longer held a grudge against humanity. It felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted off her shoulders- a burden that she had never realized was there.

     Students and teachers alike hurried past the janitor as she left the bathroom, long after the girls had returned to lunch. If they had cast her a glance, or looked in her direction, she wouldn’t have known. She pushed through the crowd, wheeling her janitor’s cart in front of her, her gaze fixed on a certain point far ahead. Several boys threw snide remarks at her as she passed- one of them held a sheet up to her face, begging for her autograph before doubling up with laughter- but they couldn’t anger her. Not anymore.

     She didn’t interact with others, and nor did they interact with her. And as time went on, the image of the janitor seemed to fade. She was in the hallways as she always had been, dusting and sweeping around corners, but people didn’t notice her as they had before. Those boys and girls who had once ridiculed the janitor stopped using her as means for a laugh. And as more time went on, the subject of the Janitor gradually vanished from daily conversations. In a few years, any student asked about the janitor would have responded with a blank face, and for the staff, she would have been a topic long forgotten, like a joke that had fallen out of humor ages ago, never to be mentioned again.

     As for the janitor herself… well, she certainly didn’t care. She was more at peace with herself, and with the world, than she ever had been in her career. Still she dreamed of her youth, of the lively girl she used to be, though to her it was like a corroded jewel, one that had lost its luster long ago, never to shine the way it once did.

     But at least it could shine in her dreams.