Shaker High School's Art & Literary Magazine
Courageous Echo
In the face of silence,
courage makes its choice to speak.
Reflecting Worth
In the mirror’s truth,
our reflection of worth is our greatest art.
Clarity
Beneath the chaos,
the stillness of purpose finds its way.
I don’t like to blink, if I blink everything goes away.
she said ¨In the blink of an eye it’s gone..̈ What if that’s true,
In one blink
In one second
Everything is gone.
I tried to stop blinking, to keep the moment, to pause time.
I keep my eyes open. Prying them open with two hands, making them burn hot like fire, my tears unwillingly crawl down my face.
It’s not enough.
it’s never enough, I always blink and the moment is gone
her love is gone.
I reach and Claw at my eyes, wanting to grab what I once saw
I need to go back to the feeling, bring me back to the moments.
In one blink of an eye, I now see things differently.
it’s true, she was right it’s all gone in the blink of an eye.
That cold fall air, nipping at my skin, took me back to days of pumpkin pie steaming on the windowsill. I remember you’d take me out here and we’d just talk and talk, the smoke from your cigars covering your face in a fog of misplaced memory and shooing away the gnats that loved to swarm the porch light. You would tell me the stories of sitting out here with Mom and stories of her stories of her life before I took it away from her the day I was born. You’d always let me sit in moms old rocking chair. I always thought I was taking your comfy chair from you, until that night I stayed up too late and saw you out there, alone, smoke covering your face, wistfully staring at moms chair, hoping she might take a seat and talk to you one last time.
I couldn’t comprehend how you were feeling back then. But now, as I sit, alone, in this rocking chair that creaks every time I move, I can’t help but stare at the empty wooden chair that used to hold my father, so grand, taller than the clouds of smoke that cover the wrinkles I can’t seem to remember the shape of, and I remember the incredible man who taught me everything I know and now rots, rots in that backyard where we would play, rots under the sun we would pitch tents to hide from, rots under that grave marker that i crafted with my own bare hands, rots in my head as the memory of your booming voice fades into nothing.
So I smoke, now, dad, to shoo away the gnats and blanket my eyes so I don’t have to look at the chair that holds you no longer.
Willow swayed by gale
Towering above grasslands
Kissed by golden light
Blades unruffled and gleaming
Gazing at the lustrous sky
the water looks cold like ice the combustion from it
like straight out of a freezer and
i want to jump in but i cant and i want to dive in but i
i wont afraid that my fingers will crumble like snow if i do
so i
stay my feet dangling from the pier so close to the numb water
is what i want to say but all i could manage is
the water looks cold
like snow and its almost frozen over maybe we shouldnt jump in
maybe we shouldnt dive in
And my friend walks back to the opposite end of the pier
mumbling about my uncertainty why so indecisive?
why so uncertain mumbling through i even ask myself
why i am so uncertain why im so indecisive
Tears well in my eyes,
Leaving behind happiness.
I have never liked good byes.
Sometimes I look to her and I feel empowered. She is such a strong woman. To know what I know about her is like reading one of those horror non-fiction war books in history class. The type of book you can’t imagine as real, the one nobody likes to read. But I did. The things that happened to her, I would never wish upon my least favorite people. She is brave.
Sometimes I look to her and I see a shattered mirror. Fragments of her are a part of me. The good ones that everyone praises and the bad ones that manifest deep within me. I will know her for the rest of my life and beyond. She will only know me for a part of hers, not all of it. I hold her dearly in my heart, the way she needed to be when she was just an innocent little girl in a cruel, evil world. She was hopeless.
Sometimes I look to her and I pray she loves me, like she loves her solitude. But she can’t. I am her. I am everything she doesn’t like. Something she despises. Something I can’t change. Something that twists a knife deep within my chest, piercing my heart. It makes me choke on the mouthfuls of blood that want to pool at her feet and scream “I love you”. I look to her as if she was the one who strung the stars in my night sky. But each day it feels as though it is her goal to pluck each and every one from it. Crushing them in her palm and dumping them in the treacherous murky waters known as my mind. She is precarious.
Sometimes I look to her and I want to change. She spent long hard years carrying me, nurturing me, supporting me, just for me to be something she can’t stand. I would carve runes into my flesh, reorganize every bone in my body, change anything and everything for her. But I can’t help feeling as though she does not think the same as me.
She is “Mom”.
There are some places
that even the sun doesn’t shine.
But there are voices
that can guide you
into the light.