Permanent Writer's Block

Thoughts and drawings from a high school student attempting to be an artist by living in the woods.

[theunnamedwriter]

attic

Musty boxes and dusty air and cobwebs and certificates and Mom’s moth-eaten blankets and black-and-white photographs fluttering around. The attic’s a million degrees and a million years old. I saw cracks wiggling around in the ceiling, but before I could warn him, he fell through. White dust and memories rained down on us.

[theunnamedwriter]

Everything is scarlet and black as I watch the building crumble to the ground. I didn't know fire was so loud, but the longer I stand, the more the sounds of the wailing building engrain themselves in my mind. Sirens and alarms shriek piercingly through the popping and cracking of the woodwork as the flames eat away the structure of the building. A window shatters from the heat, spraying the ground with shards of glass. The flames climb the building, higher and higher until the whole building is enveloped by the scorching fire. I can feel the heat of the fire, washing over me in waves, making my eyes water and sting. The empty windows flicker ominously; I can't see anyone else in the building but can hear the screams of those who have escaped. Somebody tugs on my arm, telling me it's not safe to be here, but I can't tear my eyes away from the fire. The ground is littered with burnt wood and glass. "Who's responsible for this?" a woman screams through the chaos, and my eyes flicker in the direction of the boy who is now hiding behind a tree, watching the dancing flames with an unstable hunger in his eyes, tossing a lighter into the wreck before smirking and vanishing into the darkness. I say nothing.

[theunnamedwriter]

Peaches

Every Saturday in the summer, we piled ourselves in the back of my big brother's dusty, rusty old pickup truck and drove down to the farmer's market downtown. We would wake up as the sun rose, and even though my body protested in sleepiness when I woke up to the sounds of my brother and sister clanging around our house, looking for car keys and slamming back doors, I forced myself to clamber out of bed because Saturdays were special. Though the sun had barely risen, the air was already heavy with summer heat, so as soon as I opened the garage door, a gust of hot, stale air that had been baking overnight in the garage would wash over me. When the truck started, though, we flew through the bumpy roads, past the quickly-drying lawns that the neighbors had watered early that morning in a futile attempt to ward off the drought; past the early-morning walkers; past the "haunted" house that had fallen into disrepair ages ago and was now home to skunks and raccoons. I sat in the bed of the truck with my sister, and the wind blew through our hair playfully. 

One Saturday I almost didn't wake up in time. But I did, and that was the morning I saw you. I stepped out of the truck, running my fingers through my windswept hair, and I saw you by the Joneses and their watermelon stand. You were watching me, and I looked down uncomfortably at my old school t-shirt and faded shorts, my normal Saturday attire. You were wearing a plaid flannel shirt and jeans, a surprise to me as I normally saw you dressed entirely in Abercrombie or Nike. You seemed to be thinking the same thing I was and looked away quickly. 

I found myself at the same stand as you after a while; you were weighing tomatoes while I was testing peaches. I was bursting to talk to you but was afraid to say something stupid, and after a while, you finally broke the tense silence. I don't remember what you said; it wasn't important, that much I knew. But I laughed and went along with what you said, bumping your shoulder with mine.

You bought me the peaches I was looking at, and bowed while presenting them to me. We snuck off to one of the buildings behind the market and each had a peach. You told me you had had a crush on me for several years; I could feel myself blushing, but I told myself it was the sticky summer morning heat burning my cheeks. You said you were moving away for a few years. Then you kissed me. You tasted like peaches, and I could still feel your lips on mine long after you left.

I didn't see you again for a long time, not until three years later. I had attempted to forget you several times, but the sound of your voice and the look of your smile had permanently engrained itself in my mind. It was winter time when I saw you again, this time at Wal-Mart, where you were selecting peaches from a pile, though they were out of season. You looked up instinctively, and our eyes met. I saw a flicker of recognition in your face, and I smiled.

[theunnamedwriter]

Mama

I love you, Mama. Mama, look. When I grow up, I want to be just like you, Mommy. Mommy, can I have another cookie? But I don’t want to go to school, Mommy. Mommy, can I please stay up a little later? Moooommy, Jimmy pushed me. Mommy, do I have to wear a dress on Sundays? But I hate broccoli. Mommy, can you please tell Santa that I’ve been super duper good this year? Mom, everyone hates me. Can I help, Mom? I’m practically a teenager, Mom. You can’t always tell me what to do. Mom, these jeans are cute. Look, they’re only $200. Can I have an iPhone, Mom? But Mom, he’s cute. You have no fashion sense, Mom. Everybody’s going to be at the party, Mom. You never let me do anything! Mom, I’m going to run away. I hate you. I’m sorry, Mom. I’m too old for that, Mom. Mom, he’s really hot. Can I please drive, Mom? I’m going out with friends, Mom. I’ll be back sometime tonight. I know what I’m doing, Mom. Shut up! I can’t wait until I leave this house. Prom’s next week, Mom. My date’s picking me up. He’s nice, Mom. Mom, you’re so overprotective. Calm down. It’s just college, Mom. Relax. Not now, Mom. I’ll call later. I’m busy. I hate ramen. Graduation’s next week, Mom. I applied for a few jobs, too. Here are the wedding invitations, Mom. Do you like them? The baby’s due in two months. Mom, I need your help. You’re getting old, Mom. Are you sure you can still do that? Mom, hold on. I’m heading to the hospital right now. Don’t go, Mom. I’m sorry. You were right. You were right about everything. Don’t go. Mommy, please stay. I love you, Mama.

[theunnamedwriter]

Solar Eclipse on Broadway Street

The entire city is silent. Enraptured, the citizens of New York City stand outside in speechless awe. They gaze at the sun, transfixed, through the thin piece of film that separates them from eternal blindness.  Pedestrians stand motionless in the middle of Broadway Street, squinting at the solar eclipse, heads and arms held high like a salute to the sun. Frazzled shopkeepers, businesspeople in crisp suits and stick-straight postures, and souvenir-clothed tourists watch the phenomenon without a word; it is as if New York City has screeched to a sudden stop just so everyone can look at the sun and the moon.

The wind whips past the people, beckoning them inside, but no one tears their eyes away from the sky. Somewhere in the distance, a dog is barking, its call echoing through the hushed streets; a few blocks over, someone’s car alarm goes off, but nobody stirs. The whole city is hypnotized by the unworldly delicacy and rarity of this moment, when the light of the sun is almost entirely extinguished. Someone shifts a little, another stifles a cough, but nothing disturbs the eerie silence.

A city without its people is the most vulnerable.

[theunnamedwriter]

Reasons Not to Fall in Love

1. You were new in 6th grade. You swore you would never like him. He was loud and crazy and obnoxious, a pest, really. You and your best friend would glare at him in class whenever he spoke and you would both giggle when he made mistakes. The first dance of the school year was coming up, and your friend asked you if what you would say if he asked you to dance; you replied with an emphatic “No!”. Your friends laughed and said you were no fun.

2. Sometime in the second semester of school, you fell in love.

3. You didn’t notice before his dark green eyes, his lean, athletic, tennis-built body, his windswept hair, his low laugh, his brilliant smile. But now you did, and you were hopelessly smitten in him. He was impossibly brilliant and funny, and you laughed at every joke he made. You made up your mind one day that you would confess your feelings to him.

4. You shouldn’t have. Not only did you risk humiliation, he only thought of you as a friend; yet over the next two years he would ask you to dance sometimes, and you would always accept. You never realized he was doing this out of pity.

5. You should never have fallen in love with him. He had a crush on one of the popular girls in your grade, you could see that. She was gorgeous and funny but was as interesting as tofu. She flirted with him, and you could see him falling for her; it broke your heart to see him so hopelessly in love with someone else.

6. Several times, you vowed to never fall for him again. It never worked.

7. You often wondered to yourself that if you had liked him for so long, maybe he was meant to be. You never truly gave up on him. He changed the way you looked at other guys forever, and even the guys you had crushes on later were never good enough. Your friends always said you could find better, but the thing was...you couldn’t. He was the best thing that had ever happened to you.

8. You’ve moved on, but not really. You live several states away now, and you wonder if he ever thinks about you. He probably doesn’t. It doesn’t matter, though. You hope you’ll never see him again.

9. And now you like other guys, but not really. They’re not the same.

10. And you say you’re over him, but not really. And he says he’s forgotten about you, but not really.

[theunnamedwriter]

in the dark

I have razzmatazz hair and malachite eyes and wear flowing dresses like sunlight on snow and earrings that go clink.  I see nothing of you, you see nothing of me. Black on black on black. I am here. I am gone. See? I am invisible like spilled ink in the ocean at night.

[theunnamedwriter]

Summer

Summer was when I sat outside in our backyard with no sunscreen on, wearing a pair of fake Ray-Bans that I bought for six dollars at some souvenir shop and cutoff shorts two sizes too big that I found in the clearance section of American Eagle and a faded, ugly t-shirt that had been hanging limply in some shadowy corner of my sister's closet before she had left, forgotten and unnoticed until I found it. I wore it more often than not, until the smell of her store-bought perfume vanished along with my memories of her. The sound of lawn mowers and cicadas drowned out my thoughts, and I'd try tanning but would only burn and then freckle, spreading a beach towel on the dry, prickly grass in my backyard and lying down with a paperback to read, the same one she used to read with me every summer. 

My sister used to read, used to love it more than anything else in the world. She read me Pride and Prejudice and all the Harry Potter books when she was eight and I was three even though I didn't understand the words she read aloud to me. And she wanted to live her life like the heroines in her books, the ones who left their homes in search of adventure and found their knight in shining armor along the way. She wanted to travel. But my mother, barely managing to take care of the two of us with her meager earnings as a day care assistant, wouldn't allow it. She too protective of my sister, too, even when she pleaded and bargained with Mom about getting a job. 

She left a few years ago without a trace. She took everything of hers except her books and the t-shirt I found later on. I didn't try to find her, though. Every summer I wait for her to come back, though I know she never will. She's off living her own story, just like I will be too, someday.