Meditation exercise 

I didn’t know I didn’t love my father as much as I was meant to until I found friends. In those friends I met fathers who weren’t only fathers to my friends but they were friends. They went out on a Sunday because dad finally had work off since he regularly worked doubles to keep Abigail in school, and Emma in gymnastics lessons. It’s not like I didn’t love my father, I did, of course I cared for him. Yet those flowers on my doorstep weren’t from him. I didn’t know what to get my father for Christmas so I didn’t get him anything, he didn’t think I would so he didn’t care. 

We don’t hug, I am a hugger, I just don’t like hugging my dad, and it’s not like that isn’t okay, nothing about this isn’t okay, it’s fine, it’s simply how it is. I don’t really know if I have that kind of love to give out, especially when it’s to somebody that may give that love to someone else. I can’t fully love someone when I don’t trust them. My dad lost my trust when he held my sister up to the fan and didn’t even flinch when she hit it. Then pretended it never happened, giving me sour candy while we watched the tv. I loved the tv because I didn’t have to love it back.  

I have never liked saying I’m different because that is just stigma, the stigma of what difference even is. Is it even different to be different anymore? On paper drawn with a black fine liner pen I am different, on textbook lines, with red ruler spacing. Who cares for that. Because that’s not what anyone sees, no one looks at you two dimensionally. Even the most self-righteous still have to decency to see you physically.

You’re reading this through a screen so I will tell this as my life was perceived, through a screen. A digitally inclined child. I grew up in many little places, none were necessarily homes, but they were roofs of sorts. The first home I remember was the home that stuck around for years, it was always there, even when we weren’t. That house saw me physically grow and mentally decline. Each physical place I stepped in I took on a new persona. I loved changing what I thought about that world because I didn’t think you could have one opinion when there was so many, how could only one be right? I took a physical change as a mental change. That mental change led to creative momentum, doing something with my hands was the only way I didn’t punch every piece of ground I walked on. I moved on to a new place at every waking moment, nothing was ever the same. As I speak here, I must start using we instead of I, my existence has been based on a plural, never an individual. The we changed my life, the we that is my twelve siblings and two parents. They kind of played a part in all this.

Guest Lecture - What is reading?

What is it about writing that you love so much? Be specific. Be analytical. Try to find words for this experience. 

I do not see writing as a whole, I see it as multiple little fragments of life, multiple scenarios, ideas, and experiences. Everything has a correlation to writing, everything comes back to the written word. The expression of writing is therapy. The ability to put endless words together like a stream of consciousness. When I write, I either drown in my words with a clear vision of the surface, or I drown getting completely covered in black, sinking into a deep pit that has no bottom. I let myself dwell, I let myself suffer, and that suffering could lead to something even better. I interpret writing as a leash for an overstimulated brain, a tennis racket that bounces my waves of words back and forth until they eventually reach the page if my brain even lets me. I have no idea what my brain is even saying half the time. But the scrambled eggs I receive I spread across a page letting myself interpret it later. What is it about writing that I love so much? It’s the boundless expression, it’s the way there is no wrong way to write, writing is writing, it’s yours, it’s the potential it holds, it’s the magnificent power a few words can hold, it’s the endless imagination. It’s something that fits directly into my future, it’s how I don’t see the world as colour and movement, I see it with words, I see people with words, and I hold my power with words. Everything comes back to the page, my existence will one day be laid out on paper. So writing is a destiny.

is it okay to not know?

which way the world spins

what do i do when someone tells me

it doesn’t

are they lying?

or is that what they believe

can belief make something true?

i asked why they thought such a thing

“now they’re gone, i don’t see things for what they are, now”

what do you see?

“i see life two dimensionally"

can a singular being who leaves

make someone irrelevent?

completely absent

when that person is still there

breathing air

only without a heart

but still with a body

the only thing i thought i wanted

were dreams

my childhood desperations

to translate to my life

she didn’t like people

as most treated her like she only mattered in the presence

of people that did

so she never really cared for anyone too much

she didn’t know how to care for herself

never taught

never sought

always hiding in doorways with an absence of hallways

always crying under blankets

when the thunder was loud enough

how could someone matter more than existence?

she might know now

she knows when she’s held

she knows at the sound of the laughter she causes

when her tears don’t reach the floor

and when she get’s asked if she’s okay

when she really is okay

I saught what fell right at my feet

when I realised I may deserve it

5 minute writing 

Letter T

Time tells how I’m meant to feel when someone talks down on me, you haven’t once even looked in my direction. Triggers are absent when you don’t even pretend to care, when I wanted to, but you didn’t want to let me. Tell me why you sit on your chair like it’s a castle, even the throne is besotted by your name. Though your name is never heard it’s only preached, out of your mouth, a preacher laundering money from his church, you launder from the speechless, the ones who don’t have the motive to speak badly on your name. Time to reach your name, I see it. To tell you what you deserve, the nothing this world has to offer, the nothing that is you. The one who has no morals, no good, not even in his toes, not even through his heart.

I was reading animal farm, someone has a problem , it’s not material for the normal, someone else wanted death spread out for their cornea, the ship moved faster as  I let it feel it’s earth environments. The ship was reading me as I was someone not for someone else, I was the ships, it felt, not a normal problem, it felt death as a normal someone, it moved through reading material faster, it wanted environment, not normal. As I let it out its cornea moved, it felt, it felt, it feels. Not I, it’s not normal, I let it feel..  The ship spread as it’s environment spread, it’s cornea spread as it’s environment spread. Death was a problem, this ship moved, but it’s not it’s problem. It’s only material for a cheat for it’s death, for a someone else to be felt. Faster the ship moved, faster and faster, animal farm not reading, it’s not earth. It’s not earth, someone has a problem, someone spread out it’s cornea, not earth. Their normal environment was it, it was their normal. I let it want someone else, I moved out it’s normal, for their wanted. It wanted death, it wanted environment.

The hum behind the curtain sent a ripple of wind through the thin cotton, windows closed, door shut, yet movement. The hum presented me with the option of fear, of stealth, of getting up from my freshly made bed and tea that dangled off the edge of my knee, I brought the hot liquid up to my lips, too fast as if I was running out of seconds before the wind would knock the soul out of my body. My fear was edible, like iron, copper wires sticking out of my gums puncturing my lips. The hum grew deeper as if compounding in my ears.

Bee: yellow, black, miniscule, insect, fuzzy, small, honey, sweet, candied, syrup, maple, gum, tree, hive, endangered, movement, wind, wistful, leaves, bush, flower, evergreen, bloom, blossom, nectar, candy, candied, sting, pain, throb, pin, inject, venom, bite.

I am sweet

I am movement

I am endangered

I am wind

I am wistful

I am evergreen

I am blossom

I am candy

I am pain

I am sweet, I look upon you with hope

I am wind, sweeping through who I am

I am candy, teeth damaged chewing on my words

I am evergreen, young with abundance of age

I am pain, gun with no bullets 

Pain

Hope

Young with abundance of age

Teeth chewing on words

Gun with no bullets

did you think?

or simply speak

did you forget that words make noise

that pound against the silent

i shouldn’t have to ask questions

as to why you hurt the ones

who healed you

i still ask everyday

you don’t answer

you’re struck quiet

without reason

you just don’t have anything good to say

Marcus was known to be one of the brighter kids but he didn’t want anyone to know it. His sarcasm and quick responses were merely natural to him. Marcus didn’t want to be perceived as the kid that thought they knew everything but he simply was, he kind of did know everything. Sam always wanted to know what he was thinking, what was going on in that little mind of his. He lost his parents, to only become wiser, that would destroy a person, any person and definitely a child. Sam wanted to know how to be like him, how to feel like him. He lost the ability a long time ago. Even when Sam treated him like he wasn’t even a person, Marcus treated him like a person. Marcus always had the intellectual ability of ten men. I never even knew what he was saying half the time. Sam asked Marcus where he found the knowledge that only a man who lived on this world for centuries could possess, when he’d only been on the world for 11 short years. Marcus did wonder for a while, he sat there quietly, fingers trialling the round lines on the carpet. Marcus speaks louder then his small voice usually allows, he speaks on observation, the meaning behind why people do, why people interact. Marcus doesn’t like talking because he says words with an immense weight. Everything means something to him, the meaning he has been able to find causes his every word to have meaning.

When I was a child I was unsure of myself mainly due to the fact that I was raised in a large family, constantly surrounded by multiple voices telling me what’s wrong and what’s right. It blurred my independence and sense of self. 

I couldn’t explain how I wanted this to affect people, I don’t think I wanted it to affect people, but it still seemed to affect people. People around me described it as my glass constantly overflowing, a seed that flourished without care. What did they know? Was I unaware that they could be living my life without any of my notice. How could they assume my life was so great? You know what the problem is with a glass constantly overflowing? People drown, how do you stop that water if you don’t know what started it? I know people want to think the best of me, the best of who I am, what I am doing, how I am perceived? It just feels wrong? Why do these people converse in a way that doesn’t make sense to me, why does my father speak to me as if he doesn’t want to ring my head dry and hang it on the line. Around these people he seems content, content about this life we have been living, the life where none of us have felt alive since we left. But we wanted this? If it’s what we wanted then we really have no one to blame but ourselves. I never knew what I wanted so I settled for what they told me I wanted. Was it what I wanted? I could never tell. Still this life I lived always seemed to have an effect on people, a “there’s no way, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that could do what you have done.”  I am 14 years old. I am now aware of what I’ve done and don’t beg to care. I couldn’t care less about anything, I’m consumed by my own head to be wary of the others around me. I just don’t want to be asked again. I don’t want to be confused again. The clarity of the ones around me make me feel forced to act sure enough, act brave enough. But all I do is ask questions. All I do is stay stuck, stay unmobile in a moving van. Travelling without movement.