sophia writes stuff

hi! i'm a writer named sophia. i write stuff. that's it, that's the blog

[written-by-sophia]

in the light of the morning i can convince myself that all is well. but each night after midnight i have the same dream: that you come back to me and take me in your arms again and tell me that you regret leaving me like you did

i think my subconscious is telling me this: i am the one who regrets not you. and: if i had known the last time we met would be the last time we met i would have told you how i felt exactly and kissed you one last time with all i had but i know the difference the dream of you (the one i am in love with) is always sorry and always loves me back the real you (the one i am in love with) does not think of me at all

[written-by-sophia]

the rain comes down in a fine mist and clears the smoke from the hills

smog moves out of the city and onto its next target and the peak of the mountain is finally visible from the woods

from where i could once only see twenty feet ahead my field of vision has finally cleared but still nothing is there

[written-by-sophia]

when i was a kid you made a flower crown for me out of daisies you tore up from the grass out by the soccer field. my hands were too shaky to tie the knots so i watched you braid them together wrap the stems around

when i was sixteen i crashed my car in the middle of the night turning at a red light straight into a ditch the cops came and flooded the whole pavement blue and red and when they asked me what happened i knew i couldn’t tell them about the daisies growing in the middle lane

when i was nineteen i dropped out of college and when i  walked out of the admissions office for the last time there were daisies growing in the cracks of the pavement. and i wished i hadn’t lived my life around all the stipulations and things i thought i knew when i was a child

[written-by-sophia]

it’s seventy degrees in october. a shaft of sunlight falls through the windshield of my car and i remember being blinded by the same sun at eight years old from the back of the car as you came to check on me. or when you offered to cut the food on my plate for me or took me away from the noise of the kitchen to teach me how to play video games.

there are some days where i wake up and wonder why you weren’t at my graduation or why you haven’t come around for the last couple christmases.

close enough to remember you fondly but far enough for me to forget, just for a second; hanging in that in-between thinking that i should invite you over for lemonade and catch up on everything you’ve been up to before remembering that it’s been five years and i should really go visit your grave.

[written-by-sophia]

the rumble of the engine keeps me warm and i am still trying to believe in god but if there is one then god put me behind the slowest BMW in the whole of the county, driving with their brake lights on and stopping at every fallen leaf on the street i’m cursing the double yellow lines and the hand over my eyes, the faces in my rearview mirror and the cold autumn dawn forcing me to choose between the squeak of the heating vents or the radio exhaust rumbles out of the engine like my car is puffing hard on a cigarette and she coughs before moving forward again and i think it might be worth being cold if i could just hear your voice in the static on the news channel

[written-by-sophia]

fog settles over the evergreen valley i walk through the woods to the old red barn. 

i spot a ghost through the morning mist changing its form to look like an outline of you.

i follow it around the foothills of the highlands and up to the crest of the peak where the power lines begin.

sun permeates the thick of the valley smog and it evaporates, leaving me cold and alone. 

funny how even after all these years it still looks just like you did at nineteen.

[written-by-sophia]

sometimes i wonder what would happen if i took the redeye bullet train and showed up at your door. would we be transported back to high school, prom night where you came with matching corsages? would you forgive all those texts i missed or all those times i tried to call you in the middle of the night? when i dream i dream about you - we’re walking in the halls of our old school, nothing ever went wrong and i never lost you in the first place. you wrote me letters before you moved out and sometimes i lay on my bed and read them all, pretending like we’re back home and seventeen and looking at the stars together. my old car and your old job and our old town and i feel like i’m walking through monuments and churchyards when i pass by all those old memories of you.

[written-by-sophia]

out of anger i might just shoot the messenger who comes with  a love confession and rose petal, neither addressed to me

out of sorrow i might just shoot the moon with a  silver-tipped arrow and watch it fall short and rest on the ground at my feet

out of love i might just shoot through my skull to hit the part of my brain that itches in the middle of the night

out of loneliness i might just shoot at nothing and hit nothing, ever and let all the targets rest untouched in the night

[written-by-sophia]

orange october comes knocking in the middle of the night - i wake up and all the leaves have fallen to the ground. suddenly the sky feels like red velvet and the air smells like smoke. my heart grows heavier as days traipse from autumn to winter, the morning light growing dim the closer savings day comes. i bid the moon goodnight and wake alone, in the middle of the forest. i run with the morning mist for a while until it evaporates, along with every memory i’ve had of the summer sun.

[written-by-sophia]

at the dinner table in the evening i look up at the ceiling light and wonder if there is a god. the mold i fleshed out of an avocado just behind the pit the abandoned paints on the counter the plane ticket hidden in my desk.

in the daytime, i have no time to think. the sky above me is clear and cloudless, the lake reflecting stars that are not there. during the night, i am nothing - i tell the girl in the mirror that she is beautiful but she looks away, does not speak back.

so it is there, in the dusk, between being happy and afraid that i dare to ask the bigger questions. the dishes by the sink the grapefruit i carried up to my room but did not eat the fragile spiderweb at the window.

[written-by-sophia]

after work i walk to the river; in the heat of july afternoons, nowhere but there can i find freedom. the willows brush against one another and it sounds like someone calling my name - i turn to them but find no solace in their whispers. i dip one finger in the river at the top, where the water runs clear, and it parts to flow around me, just for a moment.  i am immovable, but only for as long as i am attached to the land. i think, there, hidden out of sight by the rocks and tall grass and the steep valley down to the water’s edge inside the little hole in the thicket of trees i learnt how the witch falls in love with the witch-hunter.

[written-by-sophia]

i see you when i close my eyes there, on the rooftop, against the rain and there, in the yellow light all dreams take place in. i always used to listen to the same song when it thundered - you became so heavily intertwined in its measures that my chest starts feeling heavy as soon as the song begins. before i even remember why. before i even remember you. and now, during the long storm warnings and even in the stretches of summer showers, i see your arms against the sky, reaching out as if you could touch both sides of the world before coming back down again. now she lives with regrets and you don’t live with regrets. and people always ask me to clarify what i mean by that, because it sounds like a good thing. and i have to say no, he has regrets. he has a whole lot of regrets, he’d better have them. it’s the living that he’s not doing. he’s not living, but he does have regrets. see? so, when it rains, i listen to that same song and think about going to the rooftop and taking off my shoes, just to see how it felt. would i go back home and take a long shower to rinse off everything i’d done? or would the wind finally grab ahold of me like it’s been wanting to do for so long? and how do you go on living, afterwards? in the blank space? in the rain? how do you graduate, and celebrate all the birthdays he could have had? it’s something that i’ve always wanted to ask her. but then the sun breaks again, and - it’s like, if you don’t have a reason to be sad, it gets a little harder to explain and a lot easier to hide. someday that rain is gonna get me too. cause i keep trying to forget you, but every time i go to sleep i dream about seeing you again. and every time i wake up i understand you a little more, and like myself a little less.

[written-by-sophia]

when i think of you i see crows. and all the late nights we spent dreaming up ravens and feathers and exchanging texts in the backseat of each other’s  cars. and every time i see a crow i think about your eyes and the way they’d move from my face to the wall to something outside and then back again, darting everywhere like you were searching for something else but settling again on me.

i guess i always blamed myself for the shedding of feathers because god i fed you the crumbs from my bread and you brought me shiny things but i could have given you so much more and i wasn’t there like i should have been.

and i say something like “crows are my favorite bird” and someone tells me that they remember faces and hold grudges for their whole lives, that they recognize you even as you grow old. and i think about all the wrong i did and how much i loved you and i wonder if i collected all the shiny things? will you see me and want to pluck at my skin? i’ve missed you so much but your nest is so high that i can’t seem to reach  you. 

let me back in, let me see you. i will not take your feathers, do not look at me and turn away. i hear them now, cawing, and it sounds like your voice, breaking.

[written-by-sophia]

i am six and celebrating the death of a star. it falls from where i used to know heaven was and i think i could reach out and catch it if i were a god or maybe just on a plane. did it have last words - a hospital bed with morphine or a quiet thank-you to the sky before it collapsed? does it hit like a truck, hurtling towards the earth or is it the eternity they say we all experience in the thirteen seconds between life and death? imagine falling to gently implode on the ground and watching a  little girl wave and cheer from her bedroom window and make a wish with her parents that when she grows up she’ll be a writer and that she and her family will be happy and healthy. god, imagine dying and your final purpose is to grant a small child a wish.

[written-by-sophia]

papers filled with half-written poems turn into tiny birds and float out of my open window into may’s morning breeze. days turn into weeks that peel away into months and then seasons, and still i have not sought out a pen or keyboard. i focus on words that are not my own, but everything i write comes out half-sour and a little too bitter. i’ve read somewhere that you can balance most acids out with a pinch of brown sugar, but here it only makes the ink run grainy and words turn soft. i think i’ve published eighteen poems at least but it turns out i’ve just been saving them as drafts this whole time. somehow, i don’t care to rectify that. i didn’t like any of them anyway. i wish the paper birds would return so i could finish what i’ve started, but they would wind up in a pile on my desk and i would keep saying “next week” until years passed and the crinkles that mark their little wings would have long straightened themselves out, and then where would we be? i won’t have any poems and they won’t have any bit of bird left in them. still, maybe someone will pick them out from the gutter or at the very least a boney sewer rat will have a new comforter. he will sleep soundly while i stare at the wall and let the ink in my pens dry out for good.

[written-by-sophia]

i am thirteen and coming to terms with the idea that i may never fall in love. the shadows on my ceiling chase me into high school, where i toe the line between independent and lonely. i slip between the words on pages of romance novels and wonder why the idea of love has always made me turn away. i am a child that believes in fairytales and a bird trying to fly but instead learning that her wings are shaped a little different. on sunny days it gets the better of me and i remember how i used to write letters to my soulmate so that they might know my younger self. it pains me to think that no one will ever read them, but maybe i don’t mind picking them up when i’ve forgotten what they say and relearning myself all over again. if i can’t fall in love with someone else then maybe i won’t mind loving myself instead.

[written-by-sophia]

we learned russian together in the tenth grade. she used to sit with me in between classes and we would have tiny conversations with each other in a language no one else could understand. it was small at first, a private place to answer “not good” to “how are you,” a quiet, “tired” or “food?”. when we learned how to write, she was better at it than i was. she used to take my pencil and click the lead a few times, carefully etching the unfamiliar characters onto my paper for me, letting me trace her lines. we went to a party together one time and in the middle of it, just like that, she looked over at me and asked, “want to go home?” in broken russian so that no one else could understand. we left together. she always knew. we went to the market near her house and read nutrition labels written in the language to see what ingredients we could decipher. we left with loads of snacks we could barely pronounce, but they tasted like success. i taught myself how to say “i love you” three years later. i repeated it over and over again like a mantra, unable to sleep at night for the shape of the words echoing inside my head. i love you, i love you. it took the shape of her gentle hand ghosting over my cheek, the curves of her voice coming out of my mouth. i love you. something i had learned far too late to ever tell her. the last thing she told me was “see you tomorrow” and then she didn’t and i never spoke russian to her again. i look at myself in the mirror and say “i love you” but i can only ever see her staring back at me.