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The Train's A'Coming
I remember that day with perfect clarity....
I sat by the edge of the train tacks twirling my foot in the sand. The little desgins were taking my mind off the present matter. I didn't have to think about it if I didn't want to right..? I didn't want to, that's for sure. The sun was at a high point in the sky and it was a sticky humid heat that makes your tanktop stick to your sides. October weather huh......!
The train whistle blew loudly scaring me out of my comfortable foot-design-making position. The noise completely shattered the little peace and quiet I had managed to pull out of the messed up world.
I backed up a few feet to a safe yet still dangerous distance. The cars rocked along one after another like dancers doing the mamba. As I watched the train roar by I decided that whistle was my wakeup call, for life. The cloudiness of my head subsided and soon the present hit me like a ton of bricks to the face. "Stop being in denial and get your lazy butt moving", my head said.
"Stop listening to your head for once and just sit on the ground and cry. It'll be nice to let the tears out", my heart argued
"No need to rush me when have all the time in the world, I think I'll just stand here a while longer", my legs persisted.
The arguement I'd heard many times before silently played through my body. If only I could listen to all of them. Yet you, I, and my body all know that is not possible. There are always going to be two sides to all choices, and whichever body part that's strongest usually wins. When you love someone no matter how bad of a person they are for you, your heart usually wins. When you see a homeless person on the side of the road that pleads for money, no matter how your heart pulls -your mind manages to squeeze out the information they're probabaly just going to use the money for drugs; so you keep on waking. One side of you always seems to win. I had to decide which part to listen to. Actually I had to decide which part was making the most sense.
Nothing was going right anymore. I couldn't understand why this happened. It's one of those things where all you wanna do is scream "***** THE WORLD!!!!" I wanted to take it out on the world because mine was being shattered. Actually scratch that, my world was perfectly fine. My world was healthy and strong like all 14 year old girl's should be! My world was the passenger that had to sit back and be utterly helpless as my best friend's burned!! I was no doctor. I was no god. I was no magician. I couldn't do a single thing but stand by and silently pray for it to go away. As my best friend's lungs filled with the demon the doctor's called cancer, my lungs and body breathed normally and lived healthy as can be. Though I was healthy, the tourture of standing by and being helpless was killing me.
That day was a turnin point in my life. I had heard the news of the sickness and all thoughts, emotions, and breathes were preocupied by it from that moment on. My best friend's cancer was back and fully ready for battle. I remember the months that followed were relentless. I stood by her and her 2 sisters strong and steady. I was leaned on by the heaviest weight I'd ever dealt with -Yet I laughed and laughed and never forgot how to have fun. She was still my best friend and deserved her childhood to have fun in it, even if that was like sticking needles in our eyes we managed to look past the situation and try to be like before. We went to concerts, talked about boys, watched movies, and drank rootbeer foats just like nothing was wrong. On the other hand we also cried every sunday at church, we bottled many tears, and slept less each night before doctor appointments. Nothing was exactly the same, but each day was still a battle that deserved some laughter. Some happiness needed to be forced and some came easily. Memories were made, memories that will never be forgotten.
As the battle for my best friend's life continues, I still sometimes come back to the railroad and drag my feet in the sand. My mind deserves to be cleared for a while. Soemtimes my body still argues over certain things to do, but mostly this is all a heart-lead thing. I can't help but wonder why I was put in her life, all I know is I'm ready to toughen up and be there for her! Sometimes there are those days when I don't want to I get out of bed, but I just remember that train whistle. The wakeup call really did wake me up, and now I realize just what's worth living for.
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"RAZED EXPECTATIONS"
Wisps of smoke danced into the wintry air from my lips, creating ornate designs that could never be replicated. I carefully tilted the corners of my lips into a smile that I meant to be wry. Of course, it's difficult to articulate emotions that I can't feel, but I find that irony is relatively simple to demonstrate. I inhaled the toxic vapors of the cigarette casually. Its sinister, black cancer couldn't cripple a seventeen-year-old boy with no lungs, let alone a heart.
I glanced in the direction of the horizon, and flinched. The sun was dying flamboyantly, casting its radiant colors across the sky. Its last waves of light caressed my cold, pale skin. I wanted to snarl rebelliously as I felt its warmth slide against me deviously.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
My muscles went rigid, and I had to focus madly on controlling my shaking hands. I would know that voice, that beautiful, disastrous voice, in the realms beyond that of Earth. I grated my teeth, reeling in the disturbing sensations that she unknowingly always aroused in me.
I cocked my body towards her arrogantly, and lifted my mouth into a crooked crescent moon. I felt my eyes flashing, but I worked vehemently to fixate an arctic, hard tone into the dark of my indigo irises.
“I find the sunset lifeless and meaningless, actually,” I countered flatly, and a beat too late.
She laughed merrily, and I struggled within myself as my mind and body became entranced by the beautiful movement of her laughter as the colors of the sun played about her.
“You amuse me, Darian. How can you have such a pessimistic view of the world? The sun will not be lifeless until it disappears beneath the horizon, and the night falls. It’ll rise tomorrow, though,” she said.
I dared not think of her name. I hated the way my soul-if I had a soul-thrilled when her voice lingered over my name. It reminded me of music. I had to close my mind defiantly as I thought of music. I wanted nothing that resembled passion.
“That’s an inane notion that foolish women entertain. You want poetry, and ridiculous vows of forever. You aren’t difficult to read. If you want that sunset to mean something, then you want unrequited love. It doesn’t work like that,” I growled unmercifully, angry at her for unleashing the flood of feelings upon me.
Her lovely green eyes shifted into hard emeralds.
“What do you know about me, Dare? And what’s so wrong with having dreams? And why are you talking to me like that? I was simply commenting on the sunset.” She tossed her red curls, clearly miffed.
I lifted my chin, and blew smoke in her face. It was easier on me when she was angry. I don’t know why she bothered with me. Why she was brave enough to confront me. Why she didn’t follow the laws of the superficial high school we both attended. Why she didn’t stay away from me, like everyone else.
“You’ll die from that smoking, Darian.” She glared at me. We’d had this argument a lot. I lifted my eyebrows, and turned away from her, signaling that the conversation was over.
She didn’t obey, and I sighed.
“You know, Dare, you could let yourself feel. You could understand it.” Her voice was soft, a whisper in the darkening air. She was air. My air.
I reviled the potency of the emotions I could feel pulsing through me. I ran a hand through my black hair nervously, my body skidding with strange, unfamiliar energy. I didn’t want to answer her. Why didn’t she leave?
I made a fatal mistake when I looked at her. Every nerve inside of me screamed, as though my body and internal organs were recharging hurriedly in the rare moment of my awakening.
I think I felt my heart beat hesitantly.
My voice seemed like that of a stranger. It had a rich, deep tone to it. It had color.
“Understand what?”
Something in my expression changed the way she was looking at me. It may have mirrored the arrangement of my own features. She became vulnerable in that instant.
“Kiss me.” She whispered brokenly.
Surprise jolted keenly through me. God, I wished I was numb again. Everything felt electric-too intense and too vivid. Emotions scattered across my being, a mutinous invasion of the raging war against myself. I was defenseless and an easy prey to her request. I breathed jaggedly, and there was a husky vibe to it. Want. I recognized it more clearly as it bloomed vibrantly through me.
And she was waiting. For me.
I destroyed the walls I had so warily built as I leaned towards her. She lifted a creamy hand and laid it tenderly against my cheek, the expectation making her bold. I moaned, and closed my eyes. My own hands loosened, and reached for her face greedily
Something hot-burning-ignited against my skin. I wrenched myself away, dazed by the unpleasant sensation. Had a spark traveled through our bodies? That’s when I noticed the cigarette kindling like a faint ember beside my marred hand. It had burnt me. The throbbing pain brought a wave of consciousness through me. Reality. And I stared at her face, inches from mine, and something clicked inside of me. Gears that began humming smoothly, like a tuned clock. I pulled back, and tossed her hand away like it stung. I grimaced as the vitals within me slowly resumed their state of nothingness, and shook my head to clear it of its nonsensical ideas.
She watched the change take possession of me, and tears began to collect in her eyes.
I found that I could care less.
I grinned at her, and mocked, “I taste of cigarettes, Clara.”
She got up shockingly to her feet, and backed away as if understanding for the first time what I was. Tears stained her nondescript face.
I smiled, that careful replication of a smile, and said acidly, “Did I humor your silly fantasies well?”
Her face crumpled entirely, and she pivoted away and ran sobbing from my scathing ridicule.
The sun died, and all was dark
