In early August, seven years ago at 11:30 PM there was a car accident.
CNN never came. The nation did not mourn with candle-light vigils and hand written signs. A local tragedy and human legacy were buried on the same day, never to be discussed at length again. It just happened, and time moved away from that day.

Until it’s August once again, and time seems to slow to a stop.

Luciana, 26
Sam, 19

“You know, the clock is ticking.”
I stare at her from across the table; she lifts her pinky finger off the rim of a teacup as she sips.
“Let’s not start this.”
“I’m just saying!” She shrugs her shoulders, setting the cup down. “How many days has it been since someone asked you why you were single? We should put up a sign.” She lays the foundation with the palm of her hand, waving it in a line in front of my face, “We have had Zero Reminder-Free Days, and the next day you can put up a one.”
“That’s super funny.”
“I love our sarcasm. But you know, it’s probably a turn-off.”
“I feel like I would get a lot more done without you.”
“HA!” She screeches, tossing her head back, “What on earth would you be without me? Everyone needs a conscience.”
“That’s not what you are.”
“Oh really?” She slams an elbow onto the table, resting her chin in her hand, “Your inner self, then? Or perhaps your dark and troubled soul?”
“Demon.” I use the word almost as an insult rather than a defining characteristic. I’m not really sure what she is, either.
Her eyes narrow fast like a storm cloud suddenly covering the sun. She snatches the delicate teacup from the table and whips it at the wall behind me. The shards lay on the floor quivering and I wipe the splatter of lukewarm tea from my face.
“Conscience,” I smirk. My fingers curl around the wine glass in front of me and I take a sip, holding the liquid in my mouth and feeling the red stain my teeth. The thought of pitching the remainder of the wine in her face crosses my mind, which is unfortunate. Our thoughts are tied.
“I will end you,” She growls.
“You’re not so good at finishing the job.”
She gets up from the table and stalks straight through the nearest wall of the pristine blank room we sit in. I feel her crawl to the back of my head like an earwig and begin burrowing into my scar, ripping up the the nerves as she goes.
A migraine sets in, and for the rest of the day I sit in silence, The image of an old, gray haired woman staring out a sunny window continually loops through my mind.

Luciana, 26

Not so rare anymore, the symbiotic sickness of enabling.
The stunted growth of what should become a successful adult, and a parent who clings to control; thrives on reliance.
Producing only those who take pride in the blue ribbon they received for participating, holding it up to “mommy,” who should be “Mother,” by now.
In their return to the dust the world remains untouched, neither improved nor disturbed.

Luciana, 26

Bones and stars and blood
mashed together, the bones soak
in the bright red glow.
 

Luciana, 26 

It is 7:30 on a Sunday night and I have school the next day. I am in a 5^th grade split class with some 4^th graders, and I sit by the window. I like school, but it’s still the weekend and I need to do something interesting with the rest of my free time. I decide to braid my own hair.

I run upstairs to my room and grab the American Girl magazine that is sitting on the bed. Flipping through the pages, walking down the stairs I come to the section with hair tips. Sitting down on the carpet in the living room, I open up to the page on ‘crimping.’ Inside the magazine there is a picture of two girls, mid giggle, with dozens of little braids across their heads. The ends are bound with tin foil. The reason for this, according to the magazine, is so that the ends of your hair won’t get a funny line in them from a rubber band. I look at the braids these girls have and think of how neat they look. Why would anyone take them out? I like that tinfoil idea.

My hair is still wet from the shower earlier, and I part it down the middle. Beginning in the front of my head, I slowly braid down little sections until my entire scalp is covered with small braids. Each of the ends is tied off with a thin strip of tin foil wrapped around the hair. I look in the mirror and marvel at the tiny braids. The front looks good; the back was kind of hard to do but people will understand that. I smile, and go to bed.

*

I wake up for school the next day and carefully pull my favorite pink shirt over the braids. I check them in the mirror, and they look pretty much like they did yesterday, perhaps a few hairs are out of place. Good to go. I notice that the look on my mom’s face as I walk out the door is not unlike the time I wore nylon pantyhose on my head as “hair” to a family reunion.

“What? Didn’t they hold up last night? How is the back?” I turn around so that she can check.

“ They are all…still there.”

I grin and walk down to the bus stop with my brother.

*

I can’t stop smiling as I walk into school and through the door of my classroom, whipping the braids off my shoulder and listening to the swishing sound they make when the tin foil collides.

“What did you do!?”

I turn to my left, and there is the boy, shorter than the rest of the class, laughing at me.

“What?”

“You look like Medusa!”

“Who is that?”

“The mythical lady with snakes for hair! Aaaaahahahaha…”

I refuse to be bullied into taking my braids out, and will wear them for the rest of the day even if every single tin foil fastener falls out. The nickname Medusa will stick until they come up with something else.

Luciana, 26

Observing the ruins of a dystopian past
silence and lies rile rotten mouths
“A marriage that destroyed us both.”
A sickness grows in that sullen oath
The inner corrosion, hard to see
doomed this destruction incomplete

Hooks are cast; lips caught and ripped
Rotten mouths hiss and spit
One in spiteful jealousy
the other in weak complacency
Feeding their sham reality

This fated couple wanders back
into their twisted, toxic trap
And as time continues to pass
the outsider rhetorically asks,
How long can a trap last?

Luciana, 26

What a catch you are,
they say, as they step aside
and the ball flies by.

Luciana, 26

It is D.A.R.E day, and our town policeman Officer Ball stands in front of my fourth grade class. Today is the lesson on gang activity. Maybe it’s the uniform with a gun, or the lack of warmth in his voice as he opens our tiny eyes to the evils of the world; but every time Officer Ball comes around we are terrified. The whiteboard as his backdrop, the policeman paces back and forth in front of our desks, his black shoes stomp, heel first, and slap the ground to reinforce the crucial information he divulges. My friend Stephanie, who is known to adjust her scrunchie bun every five minutes, remains perfectly still in the presence of Officer Ball. She is still shaken from his last visit, where he informed Stephanie that if he ever caught her with drugs later in life, he would personally throw her in jail.

“So, has anyone ever asked you to join a gang?” He releases one hand from the side of his gun belt to point at a short boy in the corner desk. His small head shakes fervently in denial. “How about you?” He points to Stephanie, who would only ever be in an American Girl Doll gang, if one was ever formed. Officer Ball gestures to a few more kids, emphasizing his point. I breathe a sigh of relief when he moves on. “What would you do if you were approached by a gang?”

“Whatever they wanted…” a small voice answers.

“Oh yeah? What if they just want to beat you up?”

“I…I don’t know?”

“You don’t know? He doesn’t know. Does anybody know?”

We are a class full of Dutch Zeeland kids who aren’t even allowed to say the word “gang,” at home. We don’t know. He has us open up our D.A.R.E workbooks to the Gang page, and we fill in the questions while he continues to talk. I hope he does not read my answers out loud. I vaguely hear Officer Ball’s voice in the background, giving us a breakdown of typical gang activity.

Do I know anything about gangs? My mind wanders back to a TGIF episode of Family Matters, where Laura’s friend gets shot in the foot because she won’t give a gang the shoes off her feet that they demand. I remembered wondering why Steve Urkel wasn’t shot in the foot, because he was the star of the show. A gang wouldn’t want nerd shoes, I think.

“Does anyone have any questions?” Officer Ball taps his gun holster, waiting for our response. With the Urkel episode in my head, I wonder what Laura’s friend should have done. Given up her new shoes? I need some advice, and raise my hand.

“Yes Lucy.”

“What if a gang member pointed a gun at me and wanted my shoes?”

“Do you want to get shot? You give them your shoes.”

He is ready to move on to the next question, but I’m not done.

“Okay…but what if they want my sweatshirt, too?”

Officer Ball squints a little, “I would hand it over. It could be your sweatshirt or your life.”

“But…what if they want all of my clothes?” I asked, thinking only of not wanting to give up my Lion King sweatshirt and pink leggings; my innocence insinuating nothing more. Officer Ball stops, puts his hands on his hips and looks down at the floor. He chooses his words carefully,

“That…is a different matter. I would advise against it.”

“But the gun!”

“A topic for a different day,” he says quickly, pacing away from me and pointing at a boy who has been raising his hand for so long that he feels the need to support it with his other arm.

For the next few weeks I tried not to wear anything too cool.

Luciana, 26

The sun is bright and a chill flows over the water. The last time we walked through those woods together we were among a group of our sixth grade classmates on a Biology field trip. I had not talked to you much before, only joked around and kicked at your shins under the desk. I remember running down a large dune, catching my breath and walking next to you, listening to something about a dog; your words composing the idea of who I thought you were in my mind.

Thirteen years later we walk through the same trees to the beach. I am ahead of you and won’t hold your hand because you are taller and it throws off my balance, I say. The light on the water reflects in my eyes and I try to soak up the heat. Like a sapling growing under a giant oak I am choked away from the light. I stand by the water’s edge and you come up next to me, kneeling down to put your hands in the water with childlike wonderment. You stand, walk up behind me and wrap your arms around the back of my waist, resting your chin on my shoulder. We take a picture and the light is caught in our smiles, reflecting on the water.

The frigid wind warns of a dying summer. I notice the leaves beginning to cover the ground, dropping from the trees and crumpling underfoot in the woods as we walk away.

Our faces stay frozen in the picture. Never moving forward. Never coming back.

Luciana, 26

What if I quit writing? If the only writing I did from now on was a text or email and I no longer felt the need, the pressure to place complex human emotion on the page. The words used to flow so easily from my head; so many ideas and thoughts. I don’t have anything to say anymore. I look at my arsenal; car accidents, pain, lots of blood that is now dried, brown and flakes away. These things are in the past. These things are my story. No one cares about my story; perhaps not even I do, now.

It’s as if nothing new has happened in the past five years.  Nothing terribly sad anyway. I can’t write about a good ending, there is no fire there. If I were a neurologist I couldn’t perform heart surgery. All doctors are not the same; no writer is ever the same as another. I cannot write what I don’t know, and everything that I do write seems to echo a piece already done. Same topic, same conclusion, same theme: Dwelling.

I look for new material in the past, digging further into topics that are derelict and decayed. I rummage through the filth and grasp at the straws buried there. Things, no matter how terrible, that I do not carry an opinion on anymore. I see nothing in the future that I could dream up that wouldn’t be a sad missing puzzle piece that I’m looking and asking for disguised in a story.

I sit at home in my bathrobe, staring at the blank computer screen and feel a burn that is not desire, its pressure. What if I quit and allowed myself to fade into a twenty-something who doesn’t have a dream? Would the published book that now hangs over my head like a sword disappear? Or worse, melt down next to the ghosts that I reach for in the past that I will never touch again?

Luciana, 26

Time has passed and I remain in the muck of the pit that I willingly crawled into, who knows how long ago.  From time to time I hear people on the outside fold the grass with their feet as they walk by.

On this day the sun winds around the muddy walls and just as it starts to disappear over the top and settle on the horizon, a small head comes into view. A  little girl peers down; her short ponytail is a single curl. She glows like a sunny memory in the fading light.

“What are you doing?”

I roll over in the dirt, off my back and onto my side to face her, propping myself up on one elbow, “What does it look like?”

“It looks like you’re playing in the mud,” the girl smiles wide with her little pink mouth closed. She moves forward, and there are pastel dogs and girls walking them on the dress she is wearing; An outfit I remember wearing often when I was little.

“We can go with that,” I grimace, dirt crackling off of my face, looking right into her light brown eyes. She is not scared of me. Her face shows more disappointment than anything, like when you look in the mirror after getting out of bed and think you might not be quite that ugly in the morning.

She shifts her weight between bare feet, “You want some help you out of there? Don’t you have friends?”

“Do you?”

The little girl looks over the pit at a solitary dandelion in the grass and thinks of the space in the hallway where the kids put on their boots in the winter before going out to play in the snow at recess. Where she stays, sits and reads, alone. When her teacher makes her go outside in the spring, her place is behind the equipment shed.

“I”m going to go home now…” she begins to back away.

I roll onto my back again to face the darkened sky. The little girl runs away without a goodbye and a certain comfort disappears with her, as if she were a thick white cloud shading me from a light that is too bright for me to stare into.

The sun has gone with her and a light rain begins to fall. The dirt that has dried over the past few days is now mud, renewed. It’s going to be impossible to climb out tonight. Too slippery, too difficult, whatever. In the rain, on the earth, I lay my head on my arm. I can taste the grit of the dirt that has made its way into the corner of my mouth and make no effort to spit it out. It doesn’t matter as I drift off to sleep alone, as I sometimes declare I prefer.

I see a hand in the dark at the top of the pit; someone is reaching down in the blackness to help me out. I study it; we both must know that I am too far down for them to actually reach me. The rain drops thicken and land in my eyes and cheeks. I blink and make no move towards the gesture. The hand disappears and I hear a rustling above. Whoever it is has now lain upon the filthy ground and is leaning into the pit, arms outstretched. An effort I take no more stock in than a ghost brushing up against my shoulder.

When I wake up in the morning to the abrasive sun in my eyes, I look to the top of the pit and no one is there. Next to me, though, is the imprint of someone else. On my shoulder, the muddy mark of a hand that I only thought could be a dream.

Luciana, 25

“Some people have said it reminds them of an airport or a bus station,” the woman says of the new office composed of more frosted glass than actual walls. I look at the curve of open desks housing half a dozen receptionists in this strange space that replaced the cozy, intimate former office of my OBGYN.

I move towards the plastic stairs with a wooden pattern on them and walk slowly up, very aware of my butt and my legs moving me along. There is a woman in maroon scrubs waiting to take me to the exam room. She gives me two shots there, one in each arm and leaves me to wait for the doctor. “Don’t take off your clothes yet, she likes to talk to you first.”

And she does. “History of anything else in your family other than diabetes?”

“Prostate cancer…”

“Okay,” and she types it into the computer as if I’m at risk.

“Okay! So I’m going to step out of the room and I need you to put that hospital gown on over there and I’ll come back and we’ll complete your exam.” The doctor steps out of the room and I remove all of my clothes before stepping across the small room to pick up the backless exam gown. There are tiny pink flowers all over it, and when I pull the cloth over my head the laundry detergent smells like a bunch of people I know.

I sit in the chair and have some time to myself to feel the cold pleather on the part of my ass cheek that lost out on the “backless” part of the gown. Eternity passes and there is a small knock at the door.

“Alright, we’re going to have you put your feet in these,” the doctor with spiky brown hair and magenta glasses points to the horseless stirrups. I abide, and she adjusts the chair so that I face the ceiling at an angle that is meant to intentionally drain pride out of the tops of women’s heads.

Her small talk is mundane and I continue to laugh nervously as she awkwardly prods at me and tells me what’s going to happen before it does, I’m sure, for legal reasons. “Feel my hands.” They are ice.

“So I recognized your last name, are you related to a Mike?”

In a normal situation, I’m never related to the person they are referring to. But of course, here, as she inserts the old, metal speculum into my special place I respond,

“Yeah…he’s my dad.”

“Ohh no way!” she works a long cotton swab into what feels like the undersides of my stomach. “We went to high school together! We go way back. What is he up to these days?”

“Umm…” Cotton swab. “He’s a painter.” Adjustment of speculum.

“Oh yeah? Let me tell you we go way back to the…”

I tune her out and make small laughs and chirps in response  until she’s done and I feel the chair moving into the upright position again.

“Well that’s it! Everything looks good to me, just make sure you throw the gown in that bin over there and schedule another yearly downstairs.”

“Mmmkay.”

And as I start to take off the gown that I feel barely covers the essentials anyway, she pops her head back in the door, “Oh, and make sure to say hi to your dad for me!”

Sure, woman who has just cranked me open and swabbed my womanhood…that’s at the top of my list.

Luciana, 25

The woods are chilly and there is just enough dying light to see an outline of the trees. I know where I’m going. My steps are soft on the cool path. Alone, I walk towards the pit in the middle of the clearing.

The moon shines through thick night clouds and I stand before the gaping hole in the ground, not knowing how far down it goes this time. I descend, and it doesn’t matter. The walls are slick mud and I sink my fingers into them. It’s not a straight shot down, and I circle the walls with my hands and feet. Dirt smears over the bruises on my legs and the light pink dress I had tried to wear earlier that day is covered in the stains of the ground. Hair falls in my face and I swipe it away with a dirty hand, and my cheek becomes smeared with the earth.

My spiral downward is marked with streaked fingerprints on the walls and suddenly a foot hits the bottom. My hands slide wearily off the walls and I lie on the floor of the pit. The ground seeps into my neck and my hair, what once was a dress; and I look up at the sky and watch the moon disappear, leaving me in the darkness. As if I belong there, I close my eyes, comforted in the fact that there is a bottom to the pit, and I appear to have hit it.

Luciana, 25

Lisa Frank Journal, 1996

Name: Luciana Lee

Age: 9

Given to me by: My Mom and Dad

Favorite Color: Purple

Favorite Food: Long Cream Filled Donuts

Favorite Song: We Wish You a Merry Christmas

Favorite Group: Classical Music

Favorite Cartoon: Winnie the Pooh

Favorite Movie: Black Beauty

Favorite Sport: Skating

Favorite Game: Sorry

Favorite Subject: Spelling

Favorite Pastime: Reading

Favorite Animal: Horse-pig

Favorite Friends: I have many

My Goal is to: Finish this diary!

September 18, 1996

Today is my birthday and I turn nine at 11:45!!!! I also got you (I always spoke directly to my journals) from my family. And I got a jewel hair mermaid Barbie and I got a Barbie sofa, chair and a coffee table. I also got two pound puppies but when I got the new one, the new one looked so much like a mom that I decided to make my old one a daddy dog. I also already had three puppies and their names were Trisket, Frisket and Biskit and Fudge! (That’s four names) The new one’s names are Cream, Coco and Hershey. 

September 10, 1998

I have three girls from last year in my class and they don’t appear to like me. People have told me that they hate me! I don’t really believe them but I don’t know that they do like me. I’ll have to find out one way or another. I’ll keep you posted.

September 11,1998

I’m on the bus now and I don’t have a care in the world! I love my teacher and we are doing family ropes today. A family rope is a large piece that has a rope section for each member of your family and your pets. My rope will be the best! (drawing of a baseball).

February 14, 1999

Dear Journal,

We go to church today. Someone from our church invited us to laugh (I’m assuming “lunch”) but I don’t want to go. I want to go home.

April 19, 1999

Dear Diary,

Today I’m fed up with “Annie!” I gave her a birthday card and she said thanks but it was like a woopty doo. Later I was swinging and Annie was next to me. “Heidi” was two swings down. Annie, obviously liking Heidi better begged me to switch with her. I asked Annie if she didn’t want me swinging next to her and she only begged me to switch. I only did so that I could be by “Julie”. She doesn’t use me like a tire.

Love Little Lu

The light is off and I roll over in bed.

Are you awake?

There is almost a voice there, but not quite. Just my thoughts in the empty, dark room. My arm hairs prickle and I smother them with a blanket.

Why have the light off…if you aren’t going to sleep?

I tuck my knees into my chest with a pillow in between my legs, making sure to smash it against my stomach so that I can’t feel gravity sagging my tummy skin downward at an angle likely to be terribly unflattering.

I wonder if someone is hiding under you bed? Or in the closet?

How old are we? I think to myself, flipping over, taking the pillow between my legs with me.

Wow, that’s a super bright clock light. Look at that, its 11:37. Really it’s almost 11:45. I’ll bet you don’t sleep ‘till 12.

I haul the comforter over my eyes and lay there in a ball, not uncomfortable though not settled in the least.

I wonder if that Taco Bell worker thought you were patronizing her in the drive-through at lunch? Remember? You said, “Thanks so much,” almost with entitlement. I’ll be she thought the same. I bet you ruined her day.

I faintly hear my hamster Toothpaste’s wheel rolling somewhere in the dark as he runs in place.

Remember that song on the radio earlier? “I knew you were trouble when you walked i-in!” “I knew you were trouble when you walked i-in!”

I focus on the hum of the fan.

I knew you were trouble when you walked i-in!

I start to drift off; the pillow grows softer and it’s not so bad having a blanket cover 90 percent of my head. I am almost at a place where I can shed my thoughts for dreams…

I knew you were trouble when you walked i-in!

It is 12:05 now, and I take it thoughts don’t need much sleep.

Luciana, 25

Dust must have something sad in it. It is dead skin, after all. The fact that it settles primarily on old belongings that we used to interact with, used to laugh and cry around; objects that have the keen ability to throw you back to an exact spot in time that had been tucked farther in your mind than you knew was possible. Our dead skin coats these memories and when we take them out years later and wipe off the dust the objects themselves and memories they hold are both more beautiful and often more terrible than we could have remembered.

Sorting through boxes recently I found a crumpled spider body sprawled atop my Margaret Henry horse books. In another sat a dust covered box full of folded boxes from Christmas past. These boxes only existed to have their tape popped at 7am Christmas morning, lids cast aside never again to find their rightful bottom counterparts, and live another year in the dark with the other box parts to submit to the same callous fate the next year.

Another small pink box held dozens of dried rose petals in separate, labeled zip lock baggies that carried a haunting scent.

I opened the lid to a teal, flowered picture box and a skeletal catnip fish lay on top. Intended for the cat  that I shared in a time-bomb, medium distance relationship, she was returned by the party she lived with to the animal shelter before I could say goodbye, much less give her the toy. Originally for confirmation that she had found a good home and wasn’t still “in the system” I let a year or two go by and searched for her on Pet Finder. Page one, same name, easily distinguishable by the overgrowth of toes on her front and back paws she looked back at the camera in a non expectant way. I pick her up in a month when I move to my new apartment.

I lifted the catnip fish from the box to toss on a pile of little toys I had already purchased for her since confirmation of our impending reunion and noticed that underneath it was a tiny paw print clay impression belonging to another small kitten, stinging a different part of me, inclining me to leave the toy in the box.

The photo box seemed bottomless, managing to encompass the scope of my car accident in an empty Vicodin bottle, a receipt from the last tank of gas I put in the Corolla, a CD with blood splatter on it and a business card from Nelson Family Dentistry for the June 20 dentist appointment that I never made it to. Things a family might keep of a loved one who has died to remember them by, except this is my box.

But I do see the bottom of the box, and resting there is a photocopied note signed “Anyways, Love Ya,” from my graduation open house signature book and a picture taken one year later. There is a wink face in the paragraph and he is looking at me in the photo. Somewhere in the box I know there is a chunk out of his orange and red tail lights. No dust has collected on any of this.

For reasons unseen, I put the lids back on each of these strange boxes and restore them to their places. I might frame that picture someday, or throw out the CD and the flowers. Or open everything back up in a year, brush off the fresh layer of dust that has settled on the boxes; on how I feel about the objects inside of them and reflect on the reality of their existence with eyes that have seen more than mine have a this point.

Luciana, 25

A bus is waiting outside the blue school doors on a cold fall day. Leaves crinkle and blow away in packs across the parking lot and I step on one and the broken pieces remain together, hanging on the pavement where they were stopped. The dark green pleather bus seat has a burn mark on the back and I stick my finger in it and squish the foam on the inside. I am reminded that this covered foam shield is my seat belt should anything happen to the bus. I wonder how good of a job it would do if the bus slammed into a wall; how my cheek bones would hold up thrown against this barrier.

Others get on the bus and a near stranger sits next to me. He is a grade above me but I am not intimidated. He is quiet and wears glasses and sits on the edge of the seat holding his backpack over his lap as if I would try to pry it away from him. I huddle close to the window as the bus begins to move and I watch the sidewalk as it rolls slowly by. I rest my head on the cold window and feel the bumps in the road.

My breath clouds the glass in a small circle; the bus turns a corner and I wipe away the condensation so that I can see him. There is a boy walking home down the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets. His Asics tennis shoes circle off the ground and clap the pavement and he walks with his head down as if moving through an invisible doorway that is too short for him. I watch the fall breeze ruffle his straight, brown hair like the down beneath a bird’s flight feathers.

The bus turns another corner and the front passenger wheel dips carelessly into a pothole hidden in dead leaves and the bus lurches momentarily. My right temple is smacked into the window and the boy disappears from sight as the bus continues on its way. The bump on my head solidifies but I look back out the window and smile thinking that he might look up from the sidewalk someday.

Luciana, 25

I think of you and my heart contracts, throat swells.

Was today the day I saw you in the parking lot? It was snowing and you were wearing earmuffs. You gave me a hug and said “Hi Luscey,” with a half lisp in the middle of my name when you were starting to smile and the letters were spreading out in your mouth.

Or one of the times spent in front of your two computer screens, clicking; staring with your mouth slightly open in concentration at nothing. Signing in to AOL Messenger and saying hello to me as I sat blocks away in front of my own computer doing the same.

Was it the summer day when I was walking down the sidewalk  in my steel toed work shoes and you drove up next to me to say hello. I apologized for smelling like gasoline; for my grass covered clothes and dirt dusted work face.

“You have nothing to worry about;” You smiled and I picked at the dirt caked to my elbow.

Was it the snowy November day when I sat on a garden bench looking at your gravestone as if it were your face? Tracing your name with my eyes, finding it impossible to connect the letters to the human who disappeared under the ground. I set my hand in the snow where your heart would have been and turned to leave.

Where were you today, any November 12 between 1988 and 2007?

I took no notice of where you were, any more than anyone else, until you were not. For a moment, though, your voice is in my head and I can almost see your face. The tightness in my throat unwinds in the comfort of your existence, at some point.

Luciana, 25

I face the shore, looking for the sun in a haze of gray clouds that hang over the water. Sleet lashes the water and my hair is matted and wet, plastered against my face.
I step towards the water and the waves reach for me. My hands sink deeper into their respective coat pockets and one closes around a cell phone. I take it out to look at the small machine. The screen lights up and I purge the connection, throwing the phone hard into the waves. No splash is made, only a tiny seam in the wave that it disappeared into.
“What are you doing?”
I turn to face the small voice behind me. The bunny is there. I pull away from the waves and kneel in the sand, wrapping my arms around him.
“Where have you been?”
“ I’ve been here.”
“All this time?”
“Of course. I told you I would be.”
“Where do you go when it gets dark?”
“Wherever you are.”
“I haven’t seen you…” I unfold my arms from the bunny and he shivers in a gust of wind. “Come here,” I unzip and guide his small white body into my coat. The bunny tucks his hind feet under himself and rests his fore paws on my side, looking up at me with little brown eyes.
The rain has turned to sleet and pelts the sand leaving millions of tiny craters behind to trace the path of the weather. I see the lake swirl dark and violent, angered by the phone now littering its floor. Beneath the waves the light on the screen dies away and the water slows its pace.
“We have to go.”
“You’re taking me?” The bunny pushes off my side with his paws and his ears pop up and point towards me.
“I want to,” I zip my coat leaving a small amount of room open at the top for the comfort of his head. “I have to.”
I feel the little paws fold underneath his body and the bunny’s ears twitch back as he rests his head against my side.

Luciana, 25

I rode bus 43 with a lot of kids from school that could be described as assholes. I know everyone has their own cross to bear, but it was just the goddamn bus, and my brother and I were the last stop. Everybody was “too cool,” to let either of us sit with them, and all of the seats were occupied by only one asshole kid. This usually ended in the bus driver coming over the intercom and demanding them to let us sit somewhere, to which they would complain, every day. These bus rides were filled with naughty language, and I quickly learned all of the “bad” words. There were many times when they didn’t use the words properly themselves.

“You shit out your ass, man!”
To which my brother muttered, “doesn’t everyone?”
One day, a new word emerged that I had not heard before.

“Bastard.”

It seemed harmless, blending so smoothly into their vocabulary. “You bastard! Give me my Walkman back!” said the chubby ginger with glasses to the girl with slicked hair sitting across the aisle. “No, you dumb fuck!” she replied.

I knew enough not to use “dumb fuck,” but when I found myself at home in front of a cupboard with an empty Wheat Thins box in it, I decided to speak my mind. stalked into the living room where my mom and brother were watching TV. I held up the box;

“What bastard at the wheat thins?”

Both heads slowly turned to face me.

“What…?” Harry’s caterpillar eyebrows were raised so high it seemed as though they would crawl off his forehead.

I repeated myself, “What…bastard ate the Wheat Thins?”

There was no punishment, but instead uproarious laughter. I was in grade school when that happened, and to this day, regarding any cracker/chip/bit of food in the household that we are running out of, I am asked which bastard ate it
before me.

Luciana, 25

The dust is sparkling in a ray of sunlight. I am sitting on the stairs just below it watching the particles dance and float. I am four. There are leaves in our yard outside. I am wearing my white Gus Macker sweatshirt and pink leggings with stirrup feet. We had Dominoes for dinner last night, and I love pizza. My brother and I are friends and we played Pretty Pretty Princess earlier today until I got the black ring. I sit on the stairs and watch the sun fade into the wall eclipsed by a cloud. The sparkling dust disappears into the walls.

Luciana, 25

     Blink, blink, blink… (cursor taps the untouched page). Aren’t you going to write something? Haven’t you anything to say? You really just used the word “haven’t”? Ridiculous.

Don’t you mock me! I’m a human, I have thoughts! I’ll write on you when I have a worthwhile idea.

     Blink…blink. That says a lot about your ideas then.

Shut your mouth!

I don’t have a mouth. I’m just a cursor.

Well you’re in my head, get out!

I’m only on the page. This is like when you blamed the tennis ball for your lack of hand eye coordination.

How would you know how I feel about anything if you were only on the page?

I come from your thoughts. It’s complicated.

Just give me a minute…give me a minute to think.

Ok…blink, blink blink…

Stop it!

What? Blinking is what I do. I’m waiting for you to get your brain together and utilize me.

Well I’m trying.

Are you?

What is that supposed to mean?

I’m just saying…blink, are you one of those writers who works hard when you feel “inspired” or is there actual effort there to make something happen?

I can’t write with nothing to say.

Can’t…blink, blink…or won’t?

Won’t I suppose, though there’s not much of a difference. I won’t write anything pointless. You know how that goes. I start on a paragraph, realize how stupid it has become and delete the whole idea before it turns into an even bigger waste of time.

What if you’ve scrapped your best idea?

I honestly don’t think I could have made a book out of any of those monotonous paragraphs.

Maybe not, but you could draw from the feeling the little story gives you. Say you write about a hamster…but what you’re getting at is entrapment.

Ha…haha. Because of the cage.

Blink…blink…blink…remember how easy things used to be? All of that Redwall fan fiction you loved to write?

Yeah… (smile). I wish I had that back. The feeling that everything I wrote and did was awesome. How does a kid lose sight of that?

I dunno…blink. Maybe life becomes less of a joke. You have deeper things to write about and they can’t just run out of your head crazy and unpolished. It has to be good because it happened.

Reality, then?

I suppose. It’s not like I had a childhood.

So what do you want to write about?

I’m not the writer. Only the scribe. It’s up to you, but I will keep blinking until you come up with something.

And if I close Microsoft Word?

I’ll just be waiting for you, blinking in your head.

Luciana, 25

I sit on the water’s edge and stare out at the waves. There is a small family to my left. A little boy is slapping his hands against the water and his large mother sits uncomfortably in the sand next to a man who could either be the boy’s older sibling or his father. They are talking about money on the beach where no one should talk at all. I biked for an hour and a half to reach this tiny public spit of land nested between large beach houses perched on sand dunes; their property marked off by ropes and DO NOT ENTER signs that I’m not so sure mean anything once you get to the water’s edge. Can you own the water?

I want them to disappear. Talk about money and slap the water at the State Park with everyone else. I want to be alone and feel the hot sand melt my feet and the cold water shock them back to life without another living soul anywhere near me. I want to lose my thoughts in the sun and feel the waves lap at my sores of self deprecation.  I want to be in a world where it doesn’t matter if you’re important because you’re the only one there.

The waves are lost in the slapping of the child’s palms and the indiscreet squabble his parents share with the world. I curl my toes and embrace the sand and smile at the water before turning to go. Walking back into the reality of a world full of people, where I am just another, left to dream of the beach where I am validated.

Luciana, 24

Look at you, you’re alive, it’s really unfair
In my ear a voice is tormenting me
How the remarkable die and in their wake
you get to live, unremarkably
 
What have you done that deserves a breath?
I wince at the sting of a newly formed scar
Such a shame, this cosmic mixup of death,
the wrong day, wrong person, wrong flip of a car

The voice in my head drips with guilt, unreserved
dragging me down like a bull by the ring
Haunting the steps of a life undeserved
Die anyway, you wasteful thing
 
Different day, different car, unrelated…
Words fade, unfair and outdated.

Luciana, 24

Tap tap tap

I looked over to the door where a nurse stood with my clipboard in his hands. The pain meds and I grinned just a little too widely at him.

Male nurse… “Murse,” I mumbled.

“How’s that?” He asked, walking closer to hear me more clearly.

“Hii…” I trailed off, peering out the window.

Murse smiled, setting the clipboard on the table next to me before turning to the bathroom on the left. I listened as he emptied out the pointless urine pan attached into the toilet bowl. Why have a bed pan clipped to the toilet? Double toilet… stupid. My cheeks flushed.

“Bedpan,” I mumbled to myself. “Bed pan…bed pan…bedpanbedpanbedpan…”

Murse re-emerged from the bathroom, “How are we feeling?” he asked.

“Mmfine. Mmheads hurts.”

His eyes scanned over the cuts that dotted my face.

“Sshurtss.” I repeated.

“Yeah you’ve got a pretty serious gash back there.” The murse gently tilted my head to the left to have a look at it. Weeks later my mother would describe the cut as having resembled a fat lipped gaping mouth before the staples.

“Cnnew seeth stapless?” My tongue seemed to slap around in my mouth. “…Why canneye talk?”

“Slurred speech is a common concussion symptom.” Murse reclaimed his clipboard and flipped through my charts, brow furrowed, “Shouldn’t be a permanent thing.”

Shouldn’t be?

“Mmaye bleeding?”

He looked up into my earnest gaze, “we’re monitoring that.”

Thatsawhy my hair wascurlee bforr.”

“Yeah?”

“Ssnaturally curly…I left fer work ssmorning with a sstraight pontail immhair.” I pointed a weak finger at my head.

Murse listened patiently.

“Ileff with a sstraight hair an woke up here later ­­­witthis mess,” My crusty matted hair crinkled when I moved. “I wunnered where the gelcameferrom…mmaye bothering yew?”

Murse shook his head.

“Nnyway, wasntgell. Wasbludd. Blood all’vr me, nmy hair. Ssoaked…Thassa lotf blood, thas really creepy…”

“Well the important thing is that it stays away from your brain,” he smiled encouragingly, looking down at my charts and checking my vitals, or whatever else was written on there.

“Soo I wentto the sshhowr…threwupp inthh hall,”

“That would be the vertigo.” I remember the way he smiled at me; it was almost a smirk. As if he knew I would be fine, or was indifferent to the reality that I might not be. “We’re going to have to keep you here until you can show improvement.”

I tilted my head, feeling a tiny flame light deep within the nerves beneath the cut, slowly squelched by Morphine. “Mmproffmt?”

Murse looked at me, I remember his dark messy hair and blue scrubs. “We need to monitor the blood in your head. You’ll have another scan early tomorrow morning. Before we let you go home we need to see that you can walk properly…and talk,” he looked back down at the chart as if it was magically populated with new information.

“Tlk?” I clucked, “Ayecnn tlk jussfine.”

It was a weak argument. We sat there in silence for a minute before Murse stood.

“Alright Luciana, you should get some rest now. I’ll be back to check you in a little bit.”

I watched Murse as he hung the clipboard on my door. I remember wondering where he would go at the end of the day. Where his friends were waiting to meet him. What his street clothes looked like. As I drifted off to sleep I remember wanting to have known him, thinking of the blood that was slowly seeping towards my brain, wondering why the last human face I saw before I might die was one of a complete stranger, taking care of me because it was his job.

Luciana, 24

In my dresser, there used to be a drawer that I never opened. There was no need, I knew exactly what was inside:

There was a stack of burned CD’s that had been free floating in my car. All of the good ones were in a folder that disappeared on the same day. They were all stuck together with a mixture of car fluid and blood, dusted with broken glass. There was a Sex and the City soundtrack case that sat on the top of the stack, in the worst shape, with blood soaked through the entire foldout.

There was a five dollar bill and two ones crusted together with the same mix of blood and car. Whenever I got really poor I always thought about spending them, but it’s just inconsiderate to hand someone bloody money.

There was a splattered two-ended Sharpie that still worked pretty well. Also a stack of “get well soon” cards sent by people who had the misfortune of reading that I was in critical condition in the paper; a cutout that was also in the drawer somewhere. There were two crossword books and a sudoku neatly stacked, untouched, sent by someone who wanted to get my brain working again.

There was a slightly bloody radio face that I unclipped from the wreck, thinking that I could re-attach it to my next car. It was a nice radio. Unfortunately, the face doesn’t work without the actual radio body, which I left behind.

There was a bottle of Vicodin with my name and the date on it, and it was empty. There’s a reason why they cut you off.

There was a bloody library card. I took that and later taped it in my journal next to the tiny bag of staples that were removed from my head injury. Like little bats, they looked.

There was an oversized beach towel with a huge rip in the bottom corner. My mom confiscated that and washed the stain out. I cut off the bottom half and still use it. Waste not.

There was a stack of pictures I took of the car when I went back to sort through what I had left behind two weeks after the crash. You can see trash throughout the car in some of the pictures. I remember rummaging through it all. I wonder what, in my mind, were the requirements for “non-trash.”

Everything I took with me was useless and stained. I remember the look my mom gave me when we got back into the minivan, me with my bag full of bloody shit.

“Lu…do you really need that?”

I clutched the garbage bag to my chest and looked at her intently,

“Absolutely.”

And I did. For two years those things sat in that drawer.

When I cleaned out my car, I did not see a scattering of useless crap; I saw wounded objects from a pivotal moment in my life that needed to come home with me. Whenever I opened the drawer that contained my objectified memories, everything looked as fucked up and bloody as the day it happened.

One day though, when I picked up the two ended Sharpie marker, the blood flaked off of it like dust, leaving nothing behind but a normal, unremarkable pen. The stains of my past began deleting themselves before I was ready to accept it, and that was confusing.

In an attempt to regain control of the situation I took Clorox wipes to everything in the drawer, and threw most of the objects away afterward. Everything but the money; it was the only thing that clung to its dark red stain of significance.

I felt better only for a few days after the cleaning rampage, until I noticed that it wasn’t just the state of the trash in the drawer that I had been preserving since the accident.

Every so often, my own current image in the mirror confuses me. The girl I see has eyes lighter than I remember, and her smile radiates a genuine happiness that I thought was lost. Her hair is short and dark and I stare at it and wonder for a split second why it’s no longer past my shoulders and soaked with red. Why there isn’t blood everywhere like there’s supposed to be. Like I deserve.

To some degree, I felt better keeping that violent memory contained inside those battered objects, shut away in a drawer. In their absence the horror of mortality has manifested itself within my being, free to continually haunt my progress. The cure for which is clearly not found in writing about it, she only digs in deeper…

Luciana, 24

“Hey.”
Half awake, I feel something tap me on the shoulder.
“Heeey!”
Stop.
And then it shoves me, smashing my face into the pillow. I sit up quickly.
“Must be nice to sleep so soundly.”
I roll over and =see the shadow of a girl standing over my bed.
“Who’s there?”

And she laughs, or shrieks rather.

I rub the sleep from my left eyelid, not willing to close both at the same time. “Please go away…”
“NO!” The girl shakes her head with aggression. A drop of something thick hits me on the cheek.
“What is that?” I slick my palm against my face and smear the liquid.
“Do you really have to ask?”

My eyes have adjusted to the dark and I can see that the girl is leaning in, dangling her long hair just above my face.  She reaches over with her right hand to squeeze the saturated mess. A thick liquid pools on the top of my forehead.

“Oh God,” I slicked my palm across my face. Leaning over to pull the nearby lamp chain I lit the room and glanced down at my damp hand. It was covered in dark red blood. Slowly, I look up to face the visitor.

She grins, and her smile is my own.

“Who we?”

I studied my nineteen year old features staring back at me. She looked innocent, and also crazier than I could remember being at that point in my life. I remembered her outfit; I had worn it almost every day back then. “I miss that sweatshirt,” was all I could think to say.
“I can’t believe you forgot what happened to it!”
“I forgot a lot of stuff that day.”
She took her index and middle finger like a pair of scissors, motioning down the middle of the shirt. “Had to cut you out out out so you could live!”
“So how are you still wearing it?”
She leaned back over me, our faces inches from one another. Using one hand, she reached down over my face and forced my head to the left, hovering her remaining index finger over the scar from the accident, hidden in my hair.  “Because,” she snarled, pressing down hard on the wound “I didn’t (poke) make it (POKE POKE) to the hospital!”
She released her grip on my face, smacking the back of my head one last time before backing away and pointing at me as I sat up straight against the wall.
“AND YOU DID!”
It still hurts to run a brush through my hair near that scar on the wrong day. I sat with my hand over my head, eyes wide staring at the bloody girl.
“I don’t understand,” my voice was weaker than I anticipated.
“Didn’t you feel different in the hospital?” she glared at me. I watched the hair that rested on her shoulders, cascading over the hood of the sweatshirt. It had soaked through in some areas like a dark red bruise. “Lighter, like something was gone?”
“So…I left you behind?”
“LEFT ME?” she screamed. The girl reached up and wrapped her hands in her hair, pulling down hard. Blood squeezed between her knuckles and ran down her wrists. “LEFT ME? YOU KILLED ME!”
“How could I kill you? That’s impossible! You are me!”
“Wrong!” she lowered her fingers from her hair. “You were me, but you got to move on! You saw our car afterwards… You can’t make a mistake like that and not have to give up some part of yourself! Look at the stain, I died in there!”
I stared into her dark eyes for longer than I intended, remembering what it felt like to see the world through them.
She laughed suddenly, “You’re such a bad driver.”
“How is that funny?”
“Its really not.”
We sat in silence for a long time, she dripping blood on the edge of my bed and me sitting stiffly against the wall.
“So…you came back to abuse me then?
“Ha. Not really. I just wanted to see what twenty four looks like, for now.”
“And for later?”
“Well you don’t get to know everything. I’ll be back, I just wanted you to be aware that dead isn’t exactly gone.”
“Of course its not.”
She smiled at me, sad and genuine. The kind I know would have been difficult for me to do at nineteen. I studied her haunted, familiar eyes. There was a cut that slashed vertically over the left one, skipping over the eyeball. In an odd way she was a stranger to me; our last connected memories were the slow motion tilt of the world inside a tiny car, burning hot pain, and the fearful question as to why we were in total blackness with no hint of a light at the end of the tunnel. There wasn’t even purgatory; only nothingness. And that’s apparently where she ended and I began.
“You dyed your hair,” her voice shook me.
“Oh, right… never done that before.”
“Funny that you went with black.” She got up from the bed and walked towards the door.
“Why?”
“Beause,” she grinned, reaching for the handle, “You and I both know all you see in the mirror is red.”
The door slammed hard. I sat against the wall for the longest time staring at the thick red hand print that was left behind on the doorknob. I felt a migraine spreading its way out from the back of my head. Since the accident, all of my headaches have begun with the same slow tapping along the scar tissue line where the cut once was…

Luciana, 24

When we moved into the farm house I remember exploring the upstairs floor for the first time. There was one bathroom, and it was painted red with a tacky poster hanging over the toilet featuring a little cartoon boy smiling, urinating, under the caption “Please be neat, Wipe the seat.” The poster came down immediately and the walls were painted white, and thus became the bathroom that my brother and I shared for the next ten years. We both had our bedrooms upstairs, Harry’s was at the end of the hall with the blue “smurf” shag carpeting, and mine was the bright white room between his and the bathroom. Aside from the playroom at the top of the stairs, those were the only rooms we used in the upstairs…but there were two more. One was across the hall from mine and felt like the third bedroom that was missing a child. The natural light in that room was surprisingly intense, despite the small window, and I crossed the hall more often than I realized to sit in a rocking chair by the window and stare out into the yard. I went outside when I wanted to be alone. I went in that room when I wanted company.

The remaining room was between the bathroom and the stairs, and it was dark and windowless. When we moved in the space was already filled with storage from the previous tenants, and it seemed odd to me that they hadn’t taken their junk with them when they left. There was one light hanging in the middle of the room that you had to cross complete blackness to get to, and I only stepped in there once just to see if there was anything in the rubble that I wanted, since I assumed they wouldn’t be coming back for it. The room was heavy; everything was dated a few decades back but oddly un-dusted with age. I remember the way the light bulb seemed to suffocate, unable to properly illuminate the darkness that curled around the objects, and the unexplained anxiety that came over me when I turned the light off and had to make it back to the door in the dark.

In the upstairs bathroom there was also a small storage crawlspace that remained painted red, and it curved back to a thin wall that touched the aforementioned storage room. We kept extra toilet paper in there, and every time I opened the little door I pictured myself getting locked inside, and how dark and terrible that would have been. As long as the door stayed closed, everything was fine.

When I think of my old bedroom I see the color white. The walls were white. The carpet was white. The light was white. It makes sense that the grungiest little girl in the world should take up residence there. I slept like a rock in my white room, innocent and carefree listening to the sounds of cows, tractors and the freeway not too far off in the distance. I could see it from my window; sometimes at night I would watch the headlights flash by to make me tired. I would often look down at the huge, square backyard and the equipment barn beyond it. The crab apple tree to the right where I would sample the “apples” every year to see if they had gotten any sweeter. Every now and then one of my cats would walk underneath my window stalking something and I would whistle. They would look around confused until they spotted me, then yowl, but I wasn’t allowed to come down, kind of like Repunzel…is what a cat lady would say.

Ten or so years later when I was told we were moving from the farm house I went into denial. I boxed nothing. I continued to sleep soundly in my peaceful white room, thinking that if I left everything in its place including myself, I would automatically get to stay. It’s a strange, suspended spot in my memory when everything in my room clung to its place, until the day I came home from school and saw that my dad had done for me what I was unable to do myself. There weren’t even boxes, it was just all gone because it had to be.

I used to drive by the old farm house just to see it and remember for a second what it felt like to belong there.  One day I drove slowly up the dirt road and around the dead end turn around, looking up at my old bedroom. There was someone in the window. A little brown haired girl with her head resting on her arms, looking out at the yard. I stopped the car and she looked right at me. I smiled, but the girl just continued to stare. She had no idea who I was…really, who she had turned out to be. That sad little girl hadn’t packed her bags ten years ago and was left behind like she thought she wanted. I can’t sleep through the night anymore because she still does in that quiet white room of the farm house that is anything but empty.

Luciana, 24

5 in the morning, and this is what I’m thinking

I am running out of the woods. The trees have turned to shadows clawing at me in the dark. Their roots spring from the dirt and reach for me as I stagger to the clearing, out of breath, my bare feet burying themselves in the sand. The air is colder than I anticipate. Suddenly shorts have become a mistake, but it doesn’t matter. I look around. I see the beach in front of me, the woods behind me, and nothing else.

Slowly I step towards the water. The sand is chilled and sinks in between my toes. It’s the sand you dream about on a hot summer day when your feet are screaming, crossing the searing beach.

I am near the water, and the waves are quiet. They lap on the shore with consistency, but when the seasons change and it becomes fall they sound different. Summer waves are optimistic. Even on rainy days they are warm and inviting. Isn’t this beautiful? Stay.

Fall waves are a goodbye. Cold and slow, they roll onto the sand and cling to it, hauled mournfully back out to sea by the next wave catching its last moment in the spotlight. Don’t let me go.

A leaf falls in the woods. Stay.

I sit on the edge of the water, and the waves claw at me like the branches in the woods had done.

I let my knees fall and stretch my legs into the water. It soaks through my shorts and seeps its way up to my sweatshirt. The water is cold and uncomfortable. I look around again; the beach is quiet. Where are you?

A wave rolls up slowly, slapping at my leg with the strength of a ghost. I watch the water get dragged away, assimilated into the waves behind it. Again and again the cold water wears at me.

I am sitting in the water with by back towards the woods. I want to call the bunny, but can’t. I don’t know his name.

Luciana, 24

I lay in bed with my eyes wide open in the dark, trying to forget how to think. Instead, pointless thoughts float through.

How important is a cylinder to the car?
Should have used that loan forbearance sooner?
What happened?

I should have written something today…

I should have written about the dream I had last night. I was sitting with a little gray and white kitten on my lap. She was a polydactyl, a “Hemingway Cat,” with extra toes on each of her paws. Her little pink nose crinkled whenever she meowed loudly, like she always did.

And then she was gone. I should have written about her.

I blink slowly in the dark. Think of something else, think of something else…

For weeks I have been falling asleep with similar thoughts floating through my head, drifting into the same non-responsive nightmare.

He never says anything. Just stands there smirking at me. He even patted me on the head once like a dog. “Shut up,” (pat, pat). I’m not even confident that didn’t actually happen in real life. It all blends together.

I ask, “Where’s the cat?”

He never responds, only grins. As if there never was a cat, and I was insane for looking.

Luciana, 24

Sophomore year, I am standing in the Gilmore Hall bathroom, with a bottle of NyQuil in one hand and the little dosage cup in the other. I pour up to the first fill line and take a look at the green liquid, lip curled, before I tip it back and immediately rinse the leavings out of my mouth. I climb into my loft bed, turn the little fan on next to my face and fall into a guided sleep.

The next night, I stand in front of the same mirror, pour to the same fill line, and climb back up into the loft again. It had been comforting the night before, to know that I was being put to sleep. It was under my control. My thoughts were unable to keep me awake that night.

The next night, I have to pick a different mirror; some girl was washing her dishes in front of my normal one.

“Aww, got a cold?” she asks, looking back at me, at the bottle, as she rinses a pink bowl.

I smile, closed mouthed. “…sure.”

“Feel better, hun.”

You don’t know me. I measure the NyQuil to the second fill line. A little more won’t kill me. I down the sour syrup. It tastes vile, as always. Running down my throat, covering my insides; coating my heart in green. That night I set the NyQuil bottle in my shower tote, keeping it in the bathroom to avoid carrying it back and forth.

The next night, at 11:00, I go for my tote. I look at the bottle; the dwindling green medicine. If the nightly process had in fact started with me trying to stop a cold, it was gone by that point. I pour to the third and highest line on the measuring cup and drunk. I wake up that morning realizing that I have no longer been dreaming, and always used to.

The next night, I pop out of my dorm room to go print something in the basement. Halfway down the hall I find myself missing my USB, and go back into the room to get it. Emily is sitting on the floor working on an art project, her computer playing music nearby. Ben Fold’s The Luckiest is on. She looks at me quickly.

“Sorry… I thought you were going to be gone for a few minutes.”

I smile, close mouthed, “Its just a song.” USB forgotten, I’ll print it in the morning, I dart out the door straight to the bathroom. I pour NyQuil to the brim of the measuring cup and lick it clean after feeling the familiar slick of the medicine slide down my throat.

I return to the room. Emily has closed her computer.

“Lu, are you ok?”

Already dizzy, eyelids half closed, I nod slightly and gave her a thumbs up. “Just tired.”

I hoist myself into the loft and fall asleep almost instantly, face down in my pillow with arms beneath me the way I had fallen onto the mattress. I wake up in that exact position, completely rigid, puffy eyed, and dreamless.

The next night, I look at what was left in the bottle. Slightly more than the regular dose I was working my way towards. I’ll have to get more tomorrow anyway. I throw the little measuring cup away in the trash, along with the NyQuil lid. I hold the bottle to my lips and tilt my head back until I am sure that every last thick drop of medicine is in me.

Once up in the loft, I hazily make sure that my alarm is set for class the next morning. I glance next to my clock at the picture that is propped there. His light brown eyes have a question in them.

“Your fault,” I mumble, before curling up in the fetal position, holding the light green Billabong shirt that did not belong to me.

For months I justified this dependency. It was just cold medicine.  It was just a shirt…and he was just a picture.

Luciana, 23.999

Pen and ink is a cryptic art, emitting the sound of a sharp metal pen scratching at the paper like a mouse stuck inside of a wall. The black liquid bleeds into the grooves gouged onto a pristine, blank canvas.The ink will occasionally drip onto the paper, unintended, leaving a sunken, dark mark; a splatter. The lines I slice into my drawings go so deep I have to get paper as thick as cardboard to accommodate, but I like the way I can feel the picture being made, and run my fingers over the ragged wounds in the aftermath.

Luciana, 23

Haiku. One of the oldest and theologically loaded forms of poetry…and this is what I submitted in class a few years ago:

My shoes are shiny

whiter than the snow, they are.

I sound like Yoda

Luciana, 22

I’m lying in my bed. The soft, black comforter is wrapped around me like a cocoon. Underneath the blanket I am wearing an over sized sweatshirt with the hood pulled over my head. It’s white, with tiny silver stars all over it. The tassels that pull the hood tight have little metal stars on the ends as well. One of the metal stars is strewn on my black pillow, as if it were out in the dark knight sky.

Curled up sideways hugging another pillow, I’m watching my laptop sitting on the left side of the bed. Seasons of TV shows pass me by as I drift in and out of double sleep, since it’s all a dream anyway. I drift back into the deep sleep and my head slides further down the pillow;  the little tassel star following it with one of its five points resting on my forehead.

I open my eyes to the touch of a tiny wet nose against mine.

“Morning,” the little bunny smiled, his tiny cheeks twitching.

“Isn’t it night time?”

“Meh,” he folded his tiny front paws under his furry chest. I smiled, lifting a hand from underneath the blanket and ruffled the bunny’s ears. He closed his brown eyes, tilting his head towards my touch.

“So what are we watching tonight?” The bunny turned his little head towards the computer screen, twitching an ear.

We see Ana Lucia is sprawled on the Dharma couch, eyes wide open, unmoving. Michael is holding a gun and Libby has just collapsed on the floor, bullet ridden as well, holding the blankets that Hurley forgot.

“Lost. The season where they get rid of everyone annoying. Shannon got shot a few episodes ago. I’m waiting for Michael and Walt to boat away.”

“And you wonder why you have nightmares?”

“It’s remedial.”

The bunny looked back. Blinked at me.

“Ok, say Locke is getting the butt of a rifle slammed into the back of his head because he’s in someone’s way? Watching that helps me think of what “real” pain must feel like.

The bunny nestled closer.

“I just think it’s weird. They survive just about everything on that island. Plane crash, falling off a cliff…Like if you get shot in the face but the “Island” wants you there? You get to live. They all survive,” I pulled the black comforter over the back of my head, covering the starry white hoodie, “until they don’t.”

The bunny sat up,  his little paws padding the blanket around him. He looked at me, “Who’s your favorite?”

I thought about it for a minute, lifting and settling my head further into the pillow. The tassel star disappeared under my cheek. “Ben Linus.”

I am lying in my bed in a starry tasseled sweatshirt. There is a bunny to my left who waits up with me while I try to identify with characters I feel like I know, wondering how my life would pan out if I was Lost on the island with them. Wondering if the gun butt to the back of the head hurt John Locke worse than the betrayal he felt when Ben talked him down from the suicidal noose he was entangled in,  and then strangled him to death on his own terms.

Luciana, 23.759 Fiction

A boy picks up the brightly segmented Rubik’s cube, intrigued by the game. Sort by color; the concept is simple. He flips the cube over in his hands, trying to figure out the trick. He wants the boxes to align. He wants the puzzle solved and defined.

The boxes don’t match up easily. It wouldn’t be a game if they did. The green ones will line up, and then the yellow. The answer is almost found, and then a blue cube appears in the middle of a red line with no possible escape. The path is not obvious. The cube is not that easy.

After awhile, the colored squares lose their allure. Solving becomes obligatory and the cube is an annoyance based upon the definition of its purpose.

Day after day the boy frantically twists the squares of the cube around and around.

Align!

And then one day he quits.

More with indifference than fury the boy tosses the Rubik’s Cube over his shoulder, not bothering to noticing that it has hit the wall and shattered. The game is destroyed.

The colored box fragments lie unsorted. But what good is a puzzle solved?

Worse than broken pieces, the fate of the once brilliantly mismatched squares would have been their stagnancy. A sorted, six sided book end that used to be a game.

Luciana, 19

 I’ve been having nightmares for awhile.  Too long. If I had my choice, it would go like this instead…

Its raining, and I’m sitting on the beach with the waves washing over my feet. It doesn’t matter that my clothes are getting wet. It doesn’t matter that there’s a storm coming. I just get to sit there and feel the water, warmer than the air, licking up my legs. It smells faintly like fish and sunshine, but you can only smell the sun once its gone down.

There’s a line of trees at my back, fortressed with dune grass. There are scratches on my legs because I came running from the woods to sit at the water because you can see everything when you’re sitting on the beach. Nothing can sneak up on you. Pull the rug out from under you.

I hear the soft crinkle of damp sand nearby like the muffled sound of a dull knife sliding into an apple. Chrisp chrisp, cricrisp. A bunny sits next to me, settling his soft cotton tail in the wet sand just past the water line. He looks out at the water.

“I wasn’t chasing you,” his little pink nose twitches as a water droplet lands on it.

“I know.”

“You always run from me.”

“Do I?” I looked down at the bunny, his sandy fur slowly becoming matted with rain.

“Well,” he re-adjusts his hind legs, “you try.”

A particularly large wave rushes up the shore, soaking my shorts. The bunny has to stagger his tiny front paws to stay upright, the lake water coming up to his chest and back.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he sputters.

Among all the rain, one fat drop lands on my cheek and I close my eyes. Chrisp chrisp, cricrisp. He is sitting closer to me, his wet fur sticking to my right arm wrapped around my folded knees.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I open my eyes, and I’m on a beach. Its raining. The water is warm, and I have a bunny stuck to my side making a promise.

Lucy, 24.759 dreaming…

I hated recess in 5^th grade. Everyone played kickball, which I loathed. I read inside as often as my teacher would let me (Redwall series), but I think she bargained with my time because she found my antisocial-ness incredibly pathetic. I had to go outside two days a week, but could huddle up and read somewhere for three. On one of my “go outside” day’s, though, she needed a volunteer to update the activity board during recess. Yes, I volunteered to stay inside and staple things.

I don’t remember what I was stapling…the only thing that comes to mind is that science poster warning you to not be like Carol, and wear those safety goggles…but I know that one came later in my high school wetlands class. Anyway, I was stapling some dumb smiley encouraging stuff to the board and somehow I managed to staple my finger, also. I felt like that was a stupid accident to report, so I didn’t tell anyone, but I had to remove it myself. The staple hurt way more coming out than going in, and as I removed it I remember thinking well that’s too bad… staples are for paper.

– – –

“Wassat?” I mumbled. I heard a click, felt a sting, and then another click. “Are thosesstaples?” Someone injected my IV drip with more morphine and my questions turned to whimpers. Thirteen staples popped into the slit in my head that resembled a giant gaping pair of dripping, bloody lips, according to my dad.

Luciana 23.75 remembering 19

Romeyns Service lot in Zeeland was just one of those buildings that had always been there, inconspicuously sitting on the corner across from the high school. I’d never bothered to take a good look at the sign and see what purpose it served. Kind of like that funeral parlor right next to the Burger King, it seemed like something I would never need to know.

We pulled up in the mint green minivan, the vehicle that was temporarily mine when I felt good and ready to try driving again. I walked up to the front office and swayed slightly.

“How can I help you?” a bearded man came out of the shop with a dirty rag in his hands, wiping the grease off before he shook ours.

“We’re here to look at the Corolla.”

I stood next to my mom and smiled blankly as she spoke; her voice was tight. The bearded man gave me a look.

“That your car?”

I nodded.

His eyes widened, “We thought for sure the driver was dead. That things a mess,” He tilted his head towards me, “You’re lucky.”

I smiled.

He unlocked the gate to the back of the lot and there to the right was my car. For some reason I had held on to the idea that it might be drivable again, but the way the car was bent into a V and the roof dented in, windshield shattered. She was destroyed,  like a stomped pop can.

I walked a slow circle around it, camera dangling off my arm.

“Oh, Goh (Mom never quite said “God”) Lu…” She backed away from the car, arms folded.

I ran my hand along the passengers side door handle, completely smashed into the metal and cracked. Glass was everywhere. I looked on to the roof and saw that it was dented in, too. My car flipped in the collision and I got to dangle upside down, unconscious, from the seat belt,  arms dragging on the ceiling until help came. I only woke up once to some “upside down” people peering in, not being able to cut me down.

I circled around to the drivers side.

“Mom, it looks good over here.”

She nodded and stayed put, not wanting to see for herself. Her mouth formed a thin line.

“There isn’t a scratch on this side, seriously! Its amazing. There’s not even blood on the wheel.” The spot where I had been sitting looked eerily untouched.

“You would never know anything ever happened in here,” I said. And then I looked up at the ceiling…

I stared at the stain for a long time, trying to picture what it would look like to have my head  swaying like a sand pendulum. I only slept for a few minutes in the space between life, and what looked like the stain of a painful death. From the minute I woke up, I’ve never stopped wondering why I was allowed to.

In a perfect world, would there have been a Franklin? The third sibling, a brother that never was. Franklin would be a little guy, a few years younger than me. He would have my dad’s curly hair and my mom’s light brown eyes. Harry is the oldest; the quiet overachiever. I would have been the classic middle child. Franklin would have been the youngest. Funny, and sweet. The name Franklin apparently means “free man.” Franklin would have lived his life one day at a time.

Franklin would have hung out with me on the farm. He would have loved taming some cats and building forts in the hayloft and throwing cow pies at me. Franklin would wear sweatshirts all the time to be like his big sister. She wore sweatshirts. She was pretty ok. Sweatshirts = pretty ok, and that would have been good enough for Franklin.

Franklin would have gotten in trouble at school, but for stupid stuff, like dumping a little puddle of water on the teacher’s chair before she sat down. She would have known it was Franklin. It was always Franklin. Franklin would have loved to draw. Pictures of super heroes and sword fights and himself in the middle of his family of five. Franklin would have been the odd number. I love odd numbers.

Franklin would have been great at sports, but not at first. He would have tried baseball, but couldn’t catch. He would have tried out for basketball, and gotten cut because he was too short. He would have played soccer, as a forward. He would have run after the ball and kicked at it, never mad when the goalie blocked it. He would have just tried again. Franklin would not have been a quitter. Franklin would have played tennis too, with me, and he would have been better. That would have annoyed me, because he was already good at soccer. Why couldn’t I have been the one that was good at tennis? Middle child syndrome…

Franklin would have been Harry Potter for Halloween every year since the year he learned how to read.

Franklin would have been a hugger. He would know when I needed one, and he would hug me around the waist and squeeze me tight because he loved his sister. Franklin would have always made me feel better. If Franklin saw me checking my phone, waiting for calls that weren’t going to happen, he would have taken my phone away and hid it so I wouldn’t care. If someone told me that writing would never amount to anything, Franklin would have made sure I saw him, sitting on the couch, reading a story I had given to him for his opinion.

I can’t ever picture what Franklin would have been like as an adult. He’s forever a kid. The idea of Franklin grows up with me, but he remains little. Maybe because he’s just an idea of what was supposed to be. Franklin is not a reality, but since when did the mere idea of something stop a writer from believing in the validity of their story?

Luciana, 23.75

One of my earliest memories was chewing through a teething ring. I don’t know if it was my curiosity as to what the liquid was on the inside, or if I figured the goal of the toy was to destroy it. Either way, my little pearly whites made it to the middle of the Muppet Babies teething ring, and I found that it was not stuffed with water, but rather an embittered chemical liquid.

I couldn’t get my mind off of the plastic, though…

The oh so chewable skeleton of the teething ring fed me with the craving to chew on all sorts of non-food things around the house. Mom threw the popped teething ring away immediately, scared that the liquid seeping out of the middle was poisonous. I had been looking forward to ingesting the rest of it, but alas…

I eventually turned on the chair I sat in during dinner. Mom didn’t want me chewing on the chairs, obviously, but she wasn’t about to throw the whole thing out because of a little gnawage on the back. We still have it, and the teeth marks on the rim of the chair run pretty deep into the wood.

It wasn’t until I found myself peeling the straw wrapper off of a juice box and chewing on the glue underneath, that I realized I’m pathetic. I wondered, Does anyone else do this? Other people have to chew on some glue every now and then…

No.

No they don’t.

Goats do that. My behavior was goat like. No one wants to admit goat traits in themselves, but I had a pretty easy time with it. Do I want to stop chewing on that chair? Nope. Is it weird that I look forward to chewing on the birthday candles more than the cake? Of course it is. Am I going to stop? Absolutely not.

I was watching TLC’s “My Strange Addiction” a month or two ago and I saw this profile story on a lady that couldn’t stop putting dishwasher powder on her teeth, and another that was addicted to ventriloquism, speaking her every word through a puppet that she carried everywhere. I thought to myself, what an idiot, eating dish soap, and also I will run if I ever see the puppet girl. What freaks.

     Craving dish soap is different than chewing on glue sticks like gum, right?

Wrong.

It isn’t.

So we had these crayons at our house from the dollar store. Normally, I wouldn’t chew on crayons because Crayola just fall apart in your mouth, but the dollar store crayons were made from candle-like wax and they melted beautifully. I chewed through a box of those things like it was my job. Every now and then I would find a little gritty thing embedded in the crayon wax. I had no second thoughts as to what those were, but then my mom caught me chewing a light pink crayon one day. She first pried it from my hands and then read the back of the box for “ingredients” and poison warnings. Turns out the little gritties were chunks of lead.

That box of crayons, and any resembling it disappeared from the craft closet. Glue sticks were on strict watch at the top shelf (she still used those, no need to throw them away). Juice boxes were replaced by Capri Suns who’s straw wrappers were stuck on with tape. I watched, after every birthday, as she threw every single one of the candles out. My world came to a crashing halt.

So sixth grade comes around, and we are at an orientation night. I sat next to Trent, a boy that had been in my first classroom.

“Hi,” I smiled.

“Hey…aren’t you the girl that ate crayons?”

“…what?”

“Yeah, you ate your crayons under your desktop! I remember you!”

I shook my head, and sank further into my chair. I’d like to say the sheer shame from that moment was enough to make me stop chewing…

Yeah. We’ll go with that.

Luciana, 23 (remembering age 5…and beyond)

Freshman year of college to cheer me up Mitch got me a beta fish. He was an iridescent blue with short fins, and we painstakingly searching the internet for the perfect name.  I wanted to avoid the mistake of hastily titling a pet. I did that once, with “Macaulay,” after Macaulay Kulkin…I was seven. It took days to decide, and still the name we came up with was stupid. Vachel.

We thought it was awesome because it’s French for “tender of the cows,” which has absolutely nothing to do with a fish. I guess it’s ok though because  it’s not like there would ever have been the occasion to use his name like “Hey, Vachel, Do something!” because he was pretty predictable.  The scary thing was that we got that name off of a baby names website, so at some point I’m sure parents somewhere in the world went on there and were like “Vachel…yeah.” for a human baby.

Anyway, Vachel’s home was a circular bowl on my desk in Gilmore Hall. When I went on my computer, he would sit there, gills flicking every so often letting me know that he was still alive. I’d like to think that he enjoyed the teal marbles on the bottom of the bowl that matched his body and a lone pink plastic plant in the middle that he sat by, all day.

From his post, Vachel watched  me flounder awkwardly through college. My Freshman year at Hope was a struggle against what was comparable to another year of high school. I lived in Gilmore, a coddling atmosphere, where the three most stringent rules dealt with the prevention of alcohol consumption at all costs, the limitation of  any and all male to female contact outside of talking and hand holding, and noise restrictions during “quiet time.” Like a plant in a pop bottle terrarium, there was a limit to how much I was allowed to grow, and I did not cross it.

I read the first essay that I wrote in college recently, detailing how I viewed my life and what my goals were for the future, and could only laugh (and throw up in my mouth a little bit) at what a little douche bag I had been.

• Heartily earning at least B’s
• Becoming a “proficient” writer
• Identify myself as an “Exceptionally centered individual.

Towards the end of the school year, Vachel started swimming oddly. He tilted more and more to his side. Mitch said it had something to do with his swim bladder, which I didn’t even know fish had. When I moved home after freshman year for the summer, I set Vachel up by my bedroom window so that he could gaze at nature in what I had assumed were to be his final days. As time passed Vachel gradually tilted further and further over until he swam completely sideways. He was typically limited to swimming in circles, but on rare occasions he would somehow shoot himself down to the bottom of the bowl, only to float back to the top, sideways.

Every day of the summer I woke up and checked the bowl, thoroughly expecting Vachel to be dead.

Every day, for the first part of the summer, I was wrong.

Days turned into weeks, and then months; Vachel just wouldn’t let go. I would leave on weekends sometimes and say goodbye to him before I left,  kiss the bowl even,  expecting it to be that last time we would ever see each other. Every time I returned however, there he was flipping around on his side like an idiot.  Vachel lived for what seemed like forever in the weirdest way, and after awhile I just assumed that he just wasn’t going to die, ever.  You don’t seriously expect things to die, when you look at the world from the safety of a terrarium. I didn’t even know what DIE meant yet.

On the morning of Sam’s funeral, I looked in Vachel’s bowl to say hello, greeted only by his un-moving, deader than dead fish corpse.  “Fuck,” was my only word as I reached my hand in the bowl, stomped over to the bathroom and watched him swirl away into oblivion.  Vachel was the only fish I couldn’t bury.

Luciana, 23

“I needa sshower…” I thought of the blood. “I needa shower I needashower!”  The blood that had dripped steadily from the slice in the back of my head had curled my entire head of hair upon drying; like gel. I could feel it crunch and flake away when I touched it. I needed it gone. There was no shower in my hospital room, so I had to travel through the halls looking for the community bathroom holding on to a metal walker because I couldn’t walk in a straight line or stand, on my own. Halfway to the hospital showers the room started spinning. I threw up all over the hall, directly in front of a receptionist desk.
“NO! No, no! What is she doing out here? Take her back to her room!” I heard a nurse say to my mother.
“Theresabludh in mm’hair, laady! Thurrss bluduh! Ahneedit gone!” My speech was slurred and repetitive from the concussion.
The receptionist stared at me for a minute, then sat back down, shaking her head. “Take a quick one.” She let us pass.
Mom sat outside the shower on a little bench in the bathroom. I sat on the floor of the shower under the faucet, watching the water run dark red down the drain. It took forever to run clear… I might have just settled for light pink.

Luciana, 21

The girl, she sits with
bright red hair
always dry
she sings on the rock, wanting legs.

It never occurred to me
A girl, watching, with legs
who wanted so badly just a single fin
that this was weird.

Luciana, 23

I love rainstorms, but this was a weird sunny one. The bright rays bounced through the slats of draining clouds. Its awesome when weather does that; little anomalies that don’t make sense. That winter we nearly had a thunderstorm during a whiteout. That was also the day that Hope College cancelled all classes in the middle of the day because of the impending ice storm that was to end all ice storms that never quite happened.
I sometimes drive around when it’s raining with no particular destination. Radio off, I listened to the sound of the water on the metal. It’s calming, aside from the time when one of my windshield wipers decided to detach itself. The day of the sunny rain storm my car swerved as the wheels on the right side were dragged into puddles that had accumulated in the curves of the road. I drove slower and rolled down my window to let the rain in.
I was stopped, waiting to turn right when a little red car pulled up in line with me two lanes over. I always like to look at the people I’m on the road with that I’m likely not to meet.
The driver was a boy. His image was blurry in the downpour, but I could tell he had his head tilted towards the ceiling. Bad day? His eyes were closed. He looked calm. I looked at his little red car, and noticed that the sun roof was open. He had opened the top of his car to let the rain in, and his head was tilted towards the sky to feel the it.
I stared at him until the light turned green, and even a minute after that. I watched red car boy drive away with his sun roof open, and made a slow right lane  turn with my window down. I will never know who that was, but seeing another solitary driver let the rain hit his face that day made me feel a little more normal, and a little less alone.

Luciana, 21

Legs sprawled, I sit comfortably in my wrinkled tennis skirt. The TV is tuned to VH1 music videos as it is most mornings after practice, accompanied by the standard breakfast chocolate milkshake.

     Coldplay.

A new band. They were British. I have not seen this video before. I lean in, milkshake covered spoon suspended above the cloudy glass, watching closely as their new single played out,

     The Scientist.

Chris Martin wakes up, British blue eyes flash. His lips move forward, mouthing the words to his song like any other music video would, but something is odd. He jumps up, or rather, un-falls down. You watch him get sucked slowly back in time as he methodically sings the haunting melody forwards.

     Tell me you love me

     Come back and haunt me

     I wan-to rush to the sta-a-art

    (at least thats what I thought the words were)  Milkshake forgotten, I lean into the TV, wondering where the hell he’s un-going, and where he started. Chris un-walks like a rusty robot through the streets.

He un-skips through a basketball court. Through a neighborhood. Through the woods. Un-circles a tree. Leaves un-fall back into the branches around him. He passes un-over an old broken fence.

Chris walks back past a girl sprawled face down in the weeds of a field, unmoving…He does not look at her.

He quickly un exits the nearby car, back to his place in the driver’s seat. The shards of broken glass dance back into place. The girl lifts off the ground among them and is tucked back into the car. The dents are popped back out of the metal as the car un-rolls down the hill and un-bursts through the fence at the top. They un-swerve off the road and the girl goes back to the moment in time before she unbuckled her seatbelt to get something trivial out of the backseat. The piano plays out the last few haunting notes of the song, and then it ends.

And I cannot help but feel, un warned.

Luciana, 23

Childhood Barbie memories with an apparent bitter man hating twist at the end…I laughed when I re-read this.

      I loved the dusty playroom. When the sun soaked through the single, small window in the middle of the room the particles danced on the beams of light. The TV was covered in dust. The couch was covered in dust. The toys were covered in dust, and as I spent most of my time there I inevitably became covered in dust. My older brother was allergic to dust, so he barely went in the playroom, and I claimed it, more or less. All of my Barbie’s were always spread out on the floor, and I had my favorites. One of them, the oldest Barbie, was nose-less, due to the fact that I had eaten it. I liked to chew things…Barbie’s hands and feet, wax of any kind (particularly birthday candles), crayons. This habit went on unnoticed until my mother discovered all the wrappers of the crayons I ate in the craft closet. Upon inspection of the box, she discovered that the crayons I had been eating contained bits of  lead, called poison control, it was a whole big thing…anyway. 

     So minus her nose, the oldest Barbie was still flawlessly beautiful to me. She had sacrificed a part of her face to satisfy my taste for plastic. I made sure that she always ended up with Ken at the end of playtime. There was just the one “Ken,” not  counting the Phoebus doll that came with my Burger King meal as a promotion for that Hunchback of Notre Dam Disney movie. His body was completely fabric besides his plastic boots and armor that held his torso together. Phoebus was not a manly man, not as much as Ken looked, anyway. Ken had blue eyes and brown hair and a chiseled body, and he never ever said a derogatory word to Barbie about their relationship. He never said much of anything, in fact. Ken would also never be expected to tell Barbie that he loved her, she would have to infer that from his vacant blue eyes. Now that I think of it, Ken wasn’t that great of a guy. He only came with one outfit, a swimsuit, so he often went un-played with because he wasn’t enough of a conversationalist for my nose-less Barbie. He passed his time quietly with Phoebus, probably lamenting their lack of genitals. Barbie was too good for Ken. No nosed, chewed hands and feet, matted hair old Barbie was too good for “dashing” young Ken. Good lesson to learn from your dolls, inner beauty.

Luciana, 19  (Thinking back on 10)

As part of a project in 7th grade when learning about the systems of the body I wrote and performed a rap as “Ricky the Rapper” to educate the class on the purpose of white blood cells with the sad amount of basic knowledge that I had accumulated. Thankfully this was a group project and there were other contributions including lessons given by Judy the jogger, and a scientist with a lot of pens in her pocket.

I’m Ricky the rapper,
and white blood cells are my game,
I’ll tell you what they do,
knowledge isn’t a shame!

The white blood cell
is your body’s defense
against toxins, virus and disease,
and you’ve had them since…

You were little and,
your body made them itself.
You don’t need to get help
From the doctors shelf.

Unless you’re really sick,
and the white blood cells are weak.
Then you take some medicine,
and the sickness it will seek!

The white blood cells,
surround the virus,
they destroy it, spit it out,
and then it’s up to us

To take care of ourselves,
the way they take care of us.
you gotta stay healthy!
Exercise is a must!

But have you ever wondered,
where all those dead cells go?
Well here’s what you do,
to stop the sickness flow…

You blow your nose!
You hack a lugie,
But one thing’s clear,
don’t show it to me!

If you’re wondering why,
white blood cells are so smart,
it’s because they have a nuclei,
and that’s a good start.

White blood cells can live
from days to weeks.
But you’ve got plenty,
so don’t you freak.

A drop of blood
has ten thousand or more.
They must be small
for your body to store.

But there is a disease
called Leukemia,
in which you have
fifty thousand or more.

But not to worry,
if you’re healthy they will
take care of you,
so just you chill!

Cause the white blood cell
Is a beautiful thing,
and that’s why this song,
I had to sing, yo.

Luciana, 13

Jenny stands, lawnmower still whipping, grass stained palms folded over her mouth. I can see her bright green eyes fixed on the ground through her plastic safety glasses. I follow them to the grass, to a slowly rotating hind leg, barely attached to a slowly dying adolescent bunny bleeding, fading out. The leg turns slower as I walk closer; like a dog running in a dream gradually returning to reality. I kneel down and follow the curve of the disemboweled intestine over its back, disappearing into the grass. I can almost see the swift mower blade take a swipe and separate flesh from baby bone in my mind.

My eyes follow the circling rabbits foot like the blade of a ceiling fan that has just been clicked off. Winding down, round and around until suddenly it stops, stiffening in mid circle.
Frozen in terror, it seemed as though the baby bunny had prematurely expired of the power to move. As if he was trying to say, “I meant to run,” after the fact, with his hauntingly mechanical rotating phantom of a leg.

Luciana, 23

Winter, 2007

The drive to the beach is different in the winter. There was not a single grain of sand in sight, only an endless blanket of heavy snow melting into the water. I hopped out of the car in my tennis shoes, instantly burying them in the snow drift as I ran towards the swing set. Mitch followed. No snow had accumulated on the seats, as if someone had just been sitting there. I squeezed my adult bottom into a child-sized swing and swung my legs back and forth. It  felt awkward with my long legs that dragged on the icy ground trying to get a rhythm going. Mitch sat on the swing next to me, facing in the opposite direction. Slowly, our swings became synchronized and we swung on in silence, the only sound was the creaking of the chains that held them.
“Who does this? Goes on the swings like an idiot in the middle of winter in the dark? This is so sweet!” Mitch smiled.
I froze, legs askew and limp over the edge of the swing seat like a rag doll. I looked over at my friend.
“One of Sam’s many phrases.”
“So sweet?”
“Mmm hm.”
Mitch paused, looking out into the sheets of thick snowflakes that continued to fall.
“When we do weird stuff like this, I feel like he’s here with us.”
“I know.”
“Like he would have been totally up for this strangeness.”
I smiled, swinging slightly.
“Do you want to go see what the lake looks like?”
“Absolutely.” I could barely see anything through the snow shower. I slowed the swing down with my left leg, dragging it through the ice underneath me. When I had stopped completely, I sat for a moment, staring out into the white nothingness. A big, lone snowflake separated from the masses and kissed my cheek. I smiled, squeezed the chains of the swing one last time, and followed Mitch towards the lake.

Luciana, 20

Nonfiction story written in a memoir class in college about my hamster Joey who I “illegally” housed in my dorm room. 

Joey needed bedding. Hamster bedding, blue this time. I chose Chow Hound over Petco because they have adoptable cats there to pet. They had a little black cat on the tether that day who got to roam semi free for awhile whilst all the other cats in their little cubicles look on in jealousy, until it’s their time on the tether. I tried to pick her up but when I held her she reached back towards her bed with her little paws, and I let her down. Two little girls started walking in my direction, towards the cats. Kids freak me out, so I made my way towards the hamster supply aisle which was my main reason for the trip. Sorry, Joey, they were all out of blue. I picked out a pretty light yellow, although I can’t imagine that he cared; I’m pretty sure hamsters are colorblind. I walked up to the checkout. There was a woman ahead of me buying dog food, and another ahead of her buying a bag of crickets and a 50 pack of mealworms. She was the mother of the two girls that came in to see the cats. I can’t imagine what kind of pet they had at home. A lizard of some kind? A snake? It just seemed odd for that little peaceful family. I looked at the bag of crickets. They were jumping around the bubble bag like popping corn. What a terrible way to go, I thought. Live your life in a bag and then get put in a cage for a death match you’re not going to win. Awful. Finally it was my turn at the checkout.

“Did you find everything ok?”
“Mmmhm, thanks.”
“Do you have a couple of hamsters?”
“Just the one.” I smiled at the thought of my little buddy and his chubby white cheeks.
“Yeah, one of ours ate the other last night.”
“Umm…what?”
“Yeah, Violeta ate Seeds last night.”
Violeta what? Seeds who? Since when are hamsters cannibalistic? “That’s terrible!”
“Yeah, but it’s fair. Seeds ate Pookie before Violeta ate him.”
I stared blankly at the cashier as eternity passed by.
“Yup well ok have a good day.”
“Yeah…you too,” she quickly handed me the bag of bedding and awkwardness.

“Joe Joe!” Back at home, I smiled and stuck my hand in the dwarf hamster’s cage. He poked his little head out from underneath his new yellow bedding. “Hey bud bud! You miss me?” He sniffed my vulnerable fingertip with his tiny pink nose, then bit me full force, with his pointy buck teeth.  I withdrew my hand in horror, wondering whether he was just irritable…or tasting me.

Luciana, 20 (April 23, 2008)