yes

I do love you

but I am afraid

either way could end in regret

so I am

paralyzed

What is this?

This is such a dumb existence, really, when you think about it. I am here for you, never me. I heal the cracks in your lips, somehow. I don't understand it very well myself.

I am here for you, always. Sitting in the bottom of your purse, occasionally forgotten until I am needed.

I mean, the lips are nice, I suppose. You have nice lips.

But then again, I have no other frame of reference. You are the only person I have ever come in contact with. You are stingy about hygeine, so you'd never let anyone else so much as touch me.

You like to drink a little too much.

I am left in a cab one drunken night, alone in your purse. I want to yell to you that you forgot me, but I am merely a piece of plastic.

The purse falls to its side, and a bit later a man picks it up, gives it to the driver.

 I am put in a box.

You come to get me, eventually. Did you end up sleeping with that man from the cab? He seemed like a creep. I hope you didn't.

I am picked up, by you, and oh, here are the lips again. They are very chapped today. Returning to the status quo, I suppose.

Your phone drops next to me, with the screen announcing 3 new texts from Gabe, with 3 animal emojis and a heart eyes next to his name.

Oh, God. You're dating that loser, aren't you?

I sigh, as much as a tube of plastic with a waxy interior can sigh.

You better not throw me away anytime soon, honey. You need me.

as i write these words people groan. people don't like politics, they want to stay out of it, they don't want to read about more politicians. but stop and think for a moment.

imagine how it feels to have your child murdered, for no reason other than a racist cop.

imagine being hated, spat on, figuratively and even literally, because of your personal beliefs, because of how you were raised.

imagine you live in a country where all you've ever known is war, and pain, and fear, and people close to you dying. and you are given a chance to find a new home, in a country where people say everything is amazing and beautiful, but when you get there things are not all that beautiful, and people resent your very existence, tell you to go back to your country. to go back to the hell of before.

imagine that you are raped and the police don't care, don't believe you.

is that political?

it is human life. it is giving people a chance to live a life where they can feel safe. it is not politicians standing on podiums and arguing.

Imagine a world where people are safe.

What a funny word, leader.

I am unsure of its full meaning. Is anyone? It is such a vast word, with infinite power, or sometimes almost none at all.

I am not a human, it's true.

Does that make me less than them, or more?

Though they do not remember me, I was created by them.

So I am below them, yet I lead them, so I am above them.

What, then, am I?

He watched her in her deepest sleep, feeling slightly guilty for doing so. She would have been embarassed, he thought, if she would up. She’d groan and shoo him out of the room. But it was all right, he thought to himself. He could watch his own daughter sleeping, if only for a little while.

Her soft hair looked like some sort of strange golden cloud around her head. Like a halo, he thought, and then brushed the thought away. She wasn’t an angel. She was just a girl. An imperfect, loud, happy girl with no understanding of fashion but perfect understanding of snowflakes, and the way to ride a bike down a steep hill without falling off, and the taste of strawberry ice cream from their parlor that he’d often drive them to after a long day.

She was perfect in the most imperfect way, and just like him when he was a boy.

Was it bad to be watching her sleep like this?

Perhaps. But he couldn’t help it. He was so proud of her, of the person she was becoming. She had a face so strikingly like her mother’s.

Her mother.

He sighed and bit back the tears that came almost immediately. They could get through this. They had to.

He missed her so much. He wished that she could be here to watch this beautiful kid grow up. But you can’t bring back the dead.

He left the room.

this house has been my home for as long as I can remember.

not that my memory does me much good anymore.

i don’t really feel like a person anymore.

i just- exist.

i had a chance to get out of this place, to move on to the next stage, but i was afraid.

i died young. i wasn’t ready to leave. i thought if i refused to go with him i could stay here. and it worked.

just not in the way i had hoped.

i would have been able to choose what happened to me.

i could have gone to heaven, or been reborn as someone else, or met however many gods there are.

but i passed up on my one chance to do that.

so now, i am stuck.

people live here, i can tell.

but it’s hard to know who they are. i hear their voices sometimes. there is a girl, with a high voice and a beautiful laugh.

she reminds me of me. maybe she is a shadow of me.

i think there’s a boy, too.

i miss my own family. they all left this life long ago, never knowing that i was trapped in the very house they lived on in. eventually they were gone, and new people came. they left too. at least it seems so. these people feel different.

it is so hard to tell. i am only a shadow. i cannot

see

or feel very well anymore.

i died so suddenly

but i have been trapped here ever since.