You're Living, And That's All Anyone Ever Did

New Writing

Spin

And here you are again, baby,
paralyzed with fear.
Scared you're not living enough,
scared of the coming years.
Well hush up baby,
hush up dear.
Throw open the windows,
smell the cool salt air.
Throw a jazz vinyl on,
and let it spin spin spin.
The years will soon be gone,
so just spin spin spin.
You're living, and that's all anyone ever did.
So just spin baby,
spin.

5.18.14

Not Enough of a Cynic

I Saw A Black Car Drive By.
I Did Not Know If It Was a Hearse or a Limousine.
I Began to Consider
How Perhaps They Were Not Really So Different At All
but,
I Decided I Would Rather Leave It To The Cynics

5.4.14

Sunday Night

It's Sunday night,
And I feel suspended, for a second,
By the sea-salt blue breeze
That stirs the tallest tips of the trees.
Caught like the sky between yesterday and tomorrow.
I know that next morning
Time will once again pull me in it's current,
But tonight it lets me float.

5.4.14

Untitled 5.14.14

I know the field ends.
But in the light of late spring
I see only green.

5.14.14.

Untitled 5.6.14

Rain on a clear day.
The sky blue brushed with gold
and the clouds far away.

It reminds me of the times I cry
without knowing why.

Maybe because I'm bad at rhyming.

Salt Skin

Fill the bath halfway.
Water hot.
Steam rising.
Pour salt.

Swirl with foot.

Is it dissolved?
Yes.
Step in.
Sit down.
Silence.
Feel the salt on your skin.
Silence.
Do you hear the ocean?
Silence.
You breathe and the water moves.
Back and forth.
In and Out.
Do you feel the tides?
Silence.
Drops of sweat roll down your face.
Feel the salt on your skin.
Silence.
Lick your upper lip.
Taste the salt on your tongue.
Do you hear the ocean?
Silence.
Stand up.
Pull the drain.
Rinse the salt off your skin.
Silence.

3.31.14

Waiting to Fall

A white 

ceramic 

mug

placed on the edge of the table,

a semi-circle ring jutting out over the precipice.

Coffee sitting stagnant in its belly, 

tasting colder, 

staler, 

with each sip.

Leaving a stained rime on the virgin white

where it has receded.

It sits there, inches away from my hand.

Nails bitten down, 

discolored

patches dry and flaky,

wrinkles beginning to show.

I watch,

from the corner of my eye.

The mug.

So brittle. 

Already lines 

in the places I know it would break apart

if it fell.

when it fell.

My hand heavy on the table,

turned lead with the power

of possibility,

the what if.

The I could.

I see the liquid 

spreading across the tiles,

pungent,

seeping out from between sharp edges

of ceramic shards.

Spreading still, 

down tracks of grout. 

Until a faceless person

lays down a rag and sops the mess up.

Sweeps the stained-ivory pieces aside,

throws the whole deal in a trash can to be driven away 

the next morning.

But my hand has not moved yet,

and still the mug sits with a semi-circle of rim jutting over the precipice,

and my hand tensed,

and watching

watching

waiting,

waiting,

waiting.



-Skye K.
January 29th 2014

The Border World-- A Story To Be Continued

I was going through old notebooks today (I only ever write in two pages of each of them) and I found a story called The Border World I had written for a flash-fiction contest. Except it went way over 100 words and needed lots of follow-up.... Anyways, I read it and, kind of like it? So now I'm thinking about continuing with it, because there are a lot of themes and such I'd like to fill out more/ introduce. Tell me what you think!
(Sorry for the funky text, I had to copy and paste and Blogger doesn't like it when I do that )

The shadows cast by the setting sun creeped and crawled across the land, distorting the silhouettes of scattered trees. Slavering waves clawed at the steep cliffs that stood guard against the sea, and the salty moans and howls called up to the girl in the house. She didn't respond to them. Instead she looked into the mug of tea she cupped in her hands, watched as the clear water infused with the brown seeping from the teabag. She looked up as the man called The Poet sat down across from her.

"She had questions, so many, but the first she asked were, "What is this place, why am I here?"

She hadn't heard the poet speak before. His voice was lilting and rythmic as he explained,

"Between where something is, and is,"

He placed each palm up, as if an "is" had come to rest there.

"There lies a place that "isn't",

A place we call the Border World,

A place you've come to visit."

He smiled, as if his quatraine had elucidated everything.

"But poet, that makes no sense! I was in my house and now I'm here, yet you tell me that here isn't anywhere?"

The poet seemed about to speak but paused, tasting the words in his mouth, flavoring and distilling, swirling with meaning and metaphor.

"The Border World, it floats between,

what you see before you and your dreams.

A snow-blank page on which reality resides

Amongst the inky black behind your eyes."

The girl did not comprehend what the poet was saying. She looked out the window to the clamoring waves, and they answered, but she did not understand their language either. Her hands were shaking; the tea she was holding rippled and came near to sloshing over the side of the cup.

Breathing deeply, the girl looked to The Poet and asked, "Why are you here, alone by the sea?"

At this the man looked out toward the afore-mentioned sea, and he seemed to be holding a great sadness in his eyes, if only for a moment. He averted his gaze quickly, getting up to pace the room.

"Before, when I said you had come to visit here, I'm afraid it was the wrong choice of words."

He stopped and shook his head, as if thinking his mistake quite ridiculous.

"Those who find themselves in the Border World,

The lose themselves as well, they change.

You can't go back to who you are,

When you don't even remember your name."

Phantom chills shimmied their way down the girls spine. "But I know my name! Its----"

The Poet met her frightened stare, and his eyes were heavy with the same sadness she had glimpsed there before.

"There's nothing you can do now,

The Border World's decided who you'll be.

But tell me, little girl,"

The Poets thoughts were not in the house, or on the girls answer, for he already knew what it would be. They were out on the edge of the cliffs, looking down at the waves crashing slilently on the rocks of the shore.

"Do you hear the sea?"

The girl did not respond, only shook her head, and sipped her tea.

The Scenic Route (Please Vote!)

The Seventeen Magazine short story contest deadline is fast approaching(the 13th) so I figured it was prime time to whip up a little five hundred word confection. The link to the page where you can heart this is http://figment.com/books/539860-The-Scenic-Route A heart counts for a vote, so please heart heart heart away and get your friends to heart as well- I win quite a bit of moolah if I get the most votes :) BTW

Can I just say that shaving a story down to 500 words from 548 is the most frustrating process I have ever had to go through. I was literally about to throw my computer out the window. Along with my dog if she kept breathing on me. ANYHOO I titled it "The Scenic Route".

I was an overachiever: the worst kind. The kind that's forced into it. My mom wasn't; she played hooky during  high school, opting for rides in rich boys' cars, outings with people now famous, and  adventures that are the stuff of stories. 

But that's all she has now, those stories. Those stories to tell at the dinner table, to guests on holidays. So I can understand; she wants me to have what she didn't after youth is gone. I want that too, but not like this. Not with the constant tightness in my chest reminding me I'm not good enough. I feel as a hiker would, climbing the steepest of mountains and being unable to see the peak. Do they keep ascending, never to reach their destination, or do they turn back and live with the regret of  having given up on all their work? Neither option appeals to me. 

And so now I look at the contest forms on the wall, the e-mails open in my inbox. I look to the pens and journals stacked under more important papers, the words, lyrics, verses in them drowned out by the concise statements of documents. I look to the dust-coated keys of my piano, not stroked for so long because the imperfect chords and melodies they sing have no place on my resume. And lastly I look to my pin board, and the pictures I displayed there. The verdant greens of forest trails, the muted blue seascapes. Quotes from poets  long gone, their words still alive in my mind. Backwoods cottages tucked away in the moss. 

These places I have never been, these people I have never met. But others have, which means these aren't dreams, but realities. They could be my reality, too, if I work for them. And I want to. 

It's not that I don't want to achieve; I do. When I see an A on my paper, I can't help but be proud. I want to enter contests, I want to win. But so easily an A can turn into "not an A+", an entry can turn into "not good enough to win". What were positives in my eyes turn to negatives in those of my mother. She sees the empty space instead of what is there. 

I don't know how to please her; I'm not sure I ever will. But I have figured out how to please myself. I neither want to continue climbing straight up the mountain or take the easy road back down. What I want is to take the scenic route. I want to forget about the peak and enjoy the mountain itself. I want to travel along those richly-hued forest paths, I want to look out and see the blue of the ocean. I want to come to understand those quotes I know by heart, and I want to be able to stay awhile at a little stone cottage amid the moss. I want to enjoy my life as I live it.