SOMETHING CREATIVE & SCARY

Today I am doing something rather nerve-racking.

And at the risk of great personal injury...and reputation.

Today I am sharing something creative...some creative writing.

When I was younger I wrote lots of stories.
About two of them are finished...and that's only because it was required for the Young Author's Contest in grade school.

One of them is about a twelve-year-old girl who is about to be the youngest person to fly a plane across the Atlantic, when she suddenly crashes and turns into a mermaid and immediately finds a mermaid friend and lives happily ever after.  I wrote that one in third grade.




The other one was about an Olympic-hopeful gymnast who gets AIDS from a blood-transfusion and dies.  It was appropriately named, "The Wind Beneath My Wings." (What?  It was a tear-jerker, ok, people?)  I wrote that in fifth grade.

I guess there was one more story I finished.

By the time I reached sixth grade my topics had matured.  My story was called "Behind a Barrier" and it was about a girl who lived in East Germany and what it was like when the wall came down.

All the other stories I wrote and never finished were different versions of two people who were best friends and one of them died.  I'm not going to try to explain why I was so in to tragedy.  I was a teenager.

 I'd like to think I have grown up a little since those stories, and that my writing has improved, and yet I am certain I make amateur mistakes and write cliches, and any editor or seasoned reader would have a comment or ten for me.

And they would be welcomed.
But it also makes it scary to share something that is so all-of-you.

I'm gonna do it anyway.
And if you have a comment or advice, I would be honored to hear it.

P.S. Don't judge me and don't think I'm weird.

Love, C

This photo was taken by beckyb2202.  You can find her here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59554281@N06/
What a talent. 

"Squall"

It came and I stayed.  Black on the edges and faint in the distance.  Like sharp teeth or black pearls on the ground.  In the sky a mirror of the water, pushing deep gray and now thunder-shots.  Silent still.  I waited until the others had run away, taken by the wind, or perhaps thrown over the pier by the waves’ power.

            And it came.

Now with the wind against my hair, brushing, pushing, slapping.  It was not enough for me, but close.  Now with the slivers sailing from the sky, slicing the air and my face with its sides.  Can I stand against it?

Now covering my face, it hurts my face, I feel my face asleep in the sleet.  The waves brushing, pushing, throwing themselves against the rocks and the cemented bench and my legs on the pier, coming over both sides.  Will they take me with them?

My denim pants heavy and stiff, nothing dry or simple or reason or allowed.  I can’t hear but the howling of seadogs on the wind, can’t see but the ends of my hair in the distance, can’t think but this is good, this is good, where has this been, this is good.

This is me.  This is me.

Now I run over broken quahogs made by seagulls and parts of fish on cement that touches boulders and the sea still wants me, the wind still wants my hair.  The boulders I reach to hug with my feet and touch from moment to moment as I balance each step on each surface.

And the beach, long empty of people in the storm, long beach crowded with me in the storm.  My sweater heavy and stiff, nothing dry or simple.  And howling in my heart, in my head, now running in my head.  Now running with the beach, in the tips of the wash of waves.  No time for footprints, no time for looking back, only gray-black sky, gray-black waves.

Walking into freedom so natural, so long ago, so seldom.  Hidden behind sea grasses where it’s quiet for one moment.  Fearing the paths that lead to softer waters.  Hearing muffled wind and muffled water and no one can see. 

Now not me, not me in the sand, not me in the water, not me in the silence under the sea, no history, no present, no presence.

Gliding into freedom so natural, so long ago, so belonging.