I've only known you for a week.

But I loved you already.

You were to be the baby of all my babies.

I was meant to carry you for the next 8 months and get to know you better. I was meant to hold you in sweet motherhood's embrace: to stare in wonder at your sweet face on the day of your birth. You were going to have so many friends. Your brother and sisters were going to love you beyond measure. You were to be our little one. I couldn't wait to carry you alongside your growing cousin, and I was so thrilled to surprise your auntie by telling her I was carrying her babies' Birthday buddy.

I felt so confident of the life you would live.

I spent hours searching for your name, but none seemed to be just right. Maybe a part of me knew then that I would never hold you. You see, sweet baby, I have lost you already. And I miss you so much. I miss the dreams I dared to dream for you. I miss all you would have been... All you could have been.

This morning, I got up, and I knew you were gone. I called the doctor and scheduled an appointment, hoping I'd been mistaken somehow. This morning your sister, who we'd not told about you, prayed for you. She prayed for her little baby brother. She thanked God for you. I am so sorry you won't get to meet her here. I wish there were some way to change it all... To give you that life I'd hoped, but alas, sweet baby, I cannot decide these things.

I know that Jesus is holding you now, and you're happy. I am so glad you are with him there.

But oh, my sweet baby with wings, I miss you already.

No one can accurately tell you about the roller coaster of emotions you are about to embark on when you have children.

The very moment you feel those first flutters of movement inside of you, you are swamped with this overwhelming sense of awe and wonder and love. With no small amount of fear thrown in as well. You are about to be a parent, you will be responsible for the life of another living thing. You will be the teacher, the guide. But what no one tells you is that this is an entity that has its own thoughts, will have its own feelings and fears, and anxieties. The first time your child wraps it's arms around you and tells you it loves you will fill you to bursting with love! And the first time this child looks you dead in the face and says it hates you, your whole world is going to crumble and fall around you. And the part that kills you? Is when you have to look into that precious face and say, "That's ok sweetheart, I still love you." Because as a parent you have to set aside your own feelings, and ensure that your children have the freedom and safe space to feel and express their own. And that is the hardest part, in my humble opinion, of being a parent.

Today at the cafe I give them a different name. When the order popped up on their computer screen, the one that shows the receipt of your order and asks for a tip, I see the barista had typed in "Allie." This could technically be a nickname for me but it never will be.

I leave my laptop screen open to get up and grab the avocado toast I had ordered. This screen was left open - the very one you're reading right now, these words plastered across the page for anyone to read while I was gone. Allie. Like the gothic dress I'm wearing to look like Wednesday Addams, it was all to pretend to be someone I'm not.

Allie. It's actually literary. I'm re-reading The Catcher in the Rye. It is the name of Holden Caulfield's younger brother, the one who died of leukemia. I'll never forget reading that section, how Holden smashed every glass window in their garage after Allie died, with his fist, later, unable to fully close that fist. He later tries punching his roommate with that fist and fails to get the result he was looking for. This anger, boiling hot, that unfairness - this is what drives me to write.

Last Friday, I heard from the fifth and final law school I had applied to. I had been rejected from the first four and thought, okay. I have one left. They took so long to respond that I thought for sure they were contemplating my application, re-reading and considering me. It's personal, applications. Did I pass the test to be above average?

I had not. Last Friday, upon hearing from the fifth and final law school, how unfortunately, they had had too many applicants to be able to accept everyone, how they had so many qualified applicants but not everyone can have a spot in the incoming class, I punched a wall.

Perhaps we are all pretending. I'm not Allie. I will not become a law school student this fall. I'm not Wednesday Addams. I didn't bleed after I had punched the wall. Even at that, I had failed. I hadn't left an impression on the hard plaster, or whatever it is that my fist had hit, whatever you call that hardness that can't be moved despite pushing against it. Anger that is misplaced, failing to reach the cosmic universe, swallowed whole and producing nothing but fists that can't close, blood that doesn't spill, a name I can't call my own.

It hurts when you don't get what you want, when the universe is seemingly conspiring against you. It hurts to be a writer, to spill these words. Why was I afraid that someone at the cafe would see my words plastered across the screen, read that I was pretending to be someone I am not?

Isn't the point of pretending to want to be convincing, to leave the impression against the metaphorical wall?

No soul goes without being touched by pain, heartache, anxiety and all those other immense unmeasurable feelings that runs through our bodies and minds as we maneuver and cope through our daily walk.

Those moments of being cut so deep where we feel there is no recovery or chance of rebound. Those days where we seem to be walking through them as if in a deep sleep. Those moments that we are rattled out of a pure paradise of peace into a plummeting all-consuming panic. Our bodies pulsate as the sensations form within the brain traveling through every single nerve right to the pounding racing heart which assures us of our worst fear that we must be dying only to look in the mirror and see there is no exterior panic present.

Wounds are peculiar...some are fresh and raw others have walked ever present through the months which turned to years feeling as if just stricken by them.

Our hurts are real, the pain is alive...sometimes others know exactly what we mean - as their paths overlap ours and at times we have all walked out from a storm and into the light...just to find that it is still night. From darkness do we ever escape? We do - we step in and out of the light, as we know shadows can always be found casting that shade upon us no matter where or when...it comes upon us somewhat unexpectedly expected.

While some hurts have just formed...others do not heal because we fail to leave them behind us where they belong - we place them in a small box and push them deep in to the back of the closet of our soul....where we fear to tread yet despite that fear, we are drawn to them over and over again opening up the box time after time, as though we are never certain what to expect each time we lift that weighted lid. No dust can gather on what continues to be touched and on that which is not forgotten nor released.

My skin has become ashes

My brain lit aflame from the promises

My eyes dulled from the smoke

As everything around me broke

My blood is flame

In horrible beauty, it destroys me from the inside without shame.

Perhaps the worst of all

Is my heart that opens the cracks to the dawn.

My heart is scorched beyond recognition

Pumping my flamed blood like a man on a mission

As if pretending that there was normalcy as the chaos consumes me

Praying that this monster is my legacy

Something amazing that I'll never get to see

But deep down my heart knows that will never be

As a legacy means nothing if he's not here with me

The blood lit only spark that has grown into a flame

It burns me until no one can know who I am until I respond to my name

"For all todays," she whispered.

She couldn't see me smile in the dark, but my hands pulled her near as hips rocked, joining us.

My lips rested against her ear; I answered with a ragged exhale.

Then I breathed her in.

She smelled beautiful, and felt so sweet. She sounded gorgeous; she looked like a poet's hymn.

We harmonized wonderfully. Ours was an ageless song, yet, youth recited it best.

She and I, a perfect chorus.

Until we forgot the words.

"For all todays," I whispered.

Today was thirty years ago, and I no longer make promises she can't keep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNwgOkl5nRY

You cast out your soul

in trade for possessing me,

without my consent

and your heart you tore,

bleeding out atrocities

for my will to rend,

but I was my own.

Full of grit-resiliency

and perseverance.

It's embarrassing to admit, but I am a sucker for romance

for tales of passion and love and vows of "til death do us part"

I always swooned over fictional men coming to save the day

sweeping their girls from situations like a hawk does its prey

I was so into them to the point my head was the place to be in

a refuge I created to take the edge off of my poor aching heart

but then again, who am I kidding,

I know that there will never be a knight in shining armor waiting for me along the way

No mafia boss to scoop me out of my misery and show me what love is all about

No lonely wolf to claim me as his mate despite all odds and come to be the partner I deserve

I know deep inside that my pain is mine to heal from and mine alone to sustain

That my hurt is all in my head and no one will ever come to taste even a droplet of its poisonous nectar

But despite it all, I guess my mind in a way still is a refuge I would choose out of my own will

That no matter how tough life can get, I need to man up even though I am no man at all

That being a soft romantic is nothing but a weakness in this time and age

That girls like me, might in fact not be made for love, to love and be loved

I mean, how could I?

When I can barely come to love myself as I am

I am a pro at finding faults within me like no mother-in-law can

I am the best at finding all sorts of reasons as to why people hate me, and none as to why anyone could come to love me

You see, I don't know when it all started,

Was it when I started to notice how I was never anyone’s first choice, not even the second or the third?

Maybe it was when all I heard was of how I should act and behave like so-and-so and never be like myself

Or perhaps it was when all throughout those years, I was constantly told to tone it down, to stop being weird and maybe act like someone else

You see, it's hard when during the years your identity is supposed to come to be,

All you hear and see is of how you should be anything but you

It does something to your soul at one point

I am broken, but no shards of me can ever be found

It's as if there was never even proof that I was once there, and that the shards have disappeared into thin air

Like me, like who I am

They say you crave the things you do not have or own

Maybe that could explain why I crave love so bad lately

Should I laugh at how ironic fate can be sometimes?

Aching for something you know fully well can never be yours, or that you are not made for

But if I am not made to love or to be loved, then how come it’s haunting my soul ?

I’d rather not feel a shred of hope over this endless torment of knowing what’s to come

I'd rather be submerged in my loneliness and not even gaze at the faint ray of light

I don’t know really,

All I can say is I am lost

I am tired and burnt out

But somehow despite all of this

A molecule within me keeps banging on the gates of my once romantic heart

Shouting!

"Let me out, let me love and be loved "

"Let me hurt and get hurt"

"Let me taste the nectar of the forbidden fruit "

"Just let me out !!"

He probably got lost on the way to his next class, but he didn’t even know what class it was. He stumbled across the room by accident, but some unseen force lured him in, made him walk down the long, dimly lit hall past the rows and rows of seats, made him ascend the stairs to the stage, made him sit down half-consciously on the sturdy oak bench. His fingers automatically reached out and felt the cool soft touch of the smooth white keys. He closed his eyes, wandered in his mind. He was back to somewhere familiar, but he couldn’t see just what yet.

He thought of Swan Lake. He picked out the melody, slowly, one note at a time. Notes morphed gradually to chords, the fingers on his left hand began to wander down the scale, add depth, he gathered speed, gathered intensity. The energy beat to the rhythm around him. He played heart and soul. He could hear the violin harmonizing in the background even though it wasn’t there.

Then he found himself lapsing into just the harmony while the violin emerged, playing the dramatic tune, hauntingly beautiful, sounding more and more real every rendition. He could see the lake, could feel the tension in the air as the poor cursed princess fell in, once again a swan, and the prince called desperately for her to return. He never felt more alive. Before he could so much as draw breath, he finished. His hands jerked from the keys as if they had electrocuted him, and he breathed heavily. That was awesome. He became aware of a strange stinging sensation in his eyes, one he hadn’t consciously felt for years. He hadn’t played piano since before he ruined his mother. It felt good to be free again. And the violin had sounded so real, like her….

He jerked around, startled. The violin was not in his head. It was as real as the girl from dodgeball standing beside him, who held a tiny stringed instrument in her hand looking very much like one.

“It’s called a pochette or kit violin,” she said softly, staring at the ground, “I take it with me everywhere so I can play whenever I need to.”

Silence fell. Oriole continued to stare, still mostly delirious from last night’s panic attacks.

“You play well,” she continued, “I remember when you used to do it before, but it was always joyful then. Now I hear only your pain.”

After a long while, Oriole opened his mouth and said flatly, “You knew me before?”

The girl looked at him, not shocked, but pitying. “Ori,” she said quietly, “It’s me. I was there when it happened.”

The memories swirled faintly back. A knot formed in his stomach—that was a time he wished never happened.

She went on, barely audible, “At your 8th birthday party.”

More silence, then she spoke again, even more gently, if that were possible, “Ori, look at me.”

He didn’t know why he obeyed. He felt inexplicably compelled to. As soon as he did, it registered. He began shivering all over. She was right. He did know her. It was a long time ago, in the life before now. She was from the life he wanted to forget ever existed. She was the best part of that life.

“Harpie?” He breathed in astonishment.

The girl nodded, smiling. “That’s right, Ori. It’s me.”

* * *

Harpie…Harper Collins…the girl next door in Spring Hill, Kansas…the girl who sat entranced in the window sill while he and his mother played sonatas…she, the angel on her grandmother’s violin…he on their dark maple and rosewood piano…“The combination of maple and rosewood is magical,” she had said…she was right…Swan Lake was her favorite….

All these thoughts and more whizzed through Oriole’s head in that one split second of recognition, much like a subway whizzing through a tunnel, each car bringing on the connection that lead to the next. So each thought brought on another, a torrent of memories long, long forgotten that seemed all the more precious for being so.

He couldn’t stay. He must have ran from the dark, stifling room as he wished to flee from his dark, stifling mind, for the next thing he knew, he was blinking in the sunlight, vigorously walking laps around the track. No one was out. It was just him, the sun, and his cascading fruit basket of emotions.

I scream at the knife being forced into my skin

It seems he’s having fun, I never should have been

In that place

At that time

Gotten into his car

Every time that hammer hits me, I can see stars

My hands bound to the ceiling

He’s asking me for favours

I want it to be over, but he continues to savour

Every

Little

Emotion

He’s sick and twisted

Im innocent, aren't I?

Just a little girl, screaming at the sky

Asking God for help, as the blade pierces me again

Why is he laughing? Why aren’t I dead?

A cloth over my mouth

I’m feeling dizzy

I fall into a deep sleep, knowing this will happen again

He continues to reassure me

That I’m his only friend