Prose - Blog Posts

“A hero is a person or character who is admired for their courage, achievements, noble qualities, who looks fear in the eyes and doesn’t even blink.”

That is the quote I saw on the wall of my sixth grade students classroom today. I strongly disagree.

All humans have hesitated. It’s instinct. It’s vital. It’s as strong as your heart beating. It is the culmination of thousands of years of survival. Hesitation is a universal experience.

Therefore, a hero always “blinks.” That ‘blink’ is the moment that human beings realize what they are doing. That singular defining moment that changes the gravity of the situation. The exact second that the given circumstances could produce a hero if the right choices are made.

Humans program robots. Robots don’t blink. If a robot were to walk through a path of throwing knives without blinking, would it be a hero? No, of course not. But by the first definition, they technically would be. The reasoning as to why they aren’t? Because the robot faces no repercussions. The robot has no risk. The robot has no real understanding of the danger, nor have they been forced to confront the facts of what they are up against.

That's where we come to our hero blinking. In order to be a hero, you must blink. You must have a moment to see the horrors that all logic would tell to run. Because it’s in that blink that the hero confronts the danger they put themselves in, and pushes forth anyways. That is what makes a hero. To have that shackling sensation of hesitation, and where most others would turn back, they trailblaze on. They trailblaze on anyway.

So here I propose a new definition:

“A hero is a person or character who is admired for their courage, achievements, and noble qualities, who looks fear in the eyes, blinks, and despite facing the world’s darkness, chooses to continue being the world’s light.”

GREY.

How the worlds gone grey,

all the colors left.

I hear that you’re ok.

Don’t you have any regrets?

All the struggles,

All the pain,

All the time I wasn’t ok.

All the years,

All the hurt,

All the times I wished I wasn’t yours.

I stopped going to therapy,

not because I thought I’d manage;

I didn’t go because it’s not fair,

For me to pay the repairs of your damage.

You got off Scott-free,

and I’m not at all shocked,

but I know it’s not me…

It was you who caused,

This slow motion car crash.

All these years later, I still have

the bruises and the whiplash,

but you don’t have a scratch.

I replay it frame by frame,

Incinerated in my brain,

So I could forever torture myself

Asking myself again,

What did I do wrong?

Was it me?

Did I ask too much?

What did you need?

What could I have done,

differently?

Or even worse,

was it you and not me?

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

FRIEND.

I count the days that have gone by,

To remind myself to be proud,

But the longer the voices have been quiet,

Only makes them all the more loud,

It’s not only when I’m awake I’m fighting,

It happens even when asleep,

I wake up, shaking and shouting,

My veins start to burn as I weep.

That burning hot pain in my back,

Damn, my arms and my wrists and my throat,

can’t smother them with hands or scratches,

It takes over and drapes like a coat.

I can’t help but wonder what’s wrong,

‘Is there anyone out there like me?’

But then I remember my friend, my love,

Good old PTSD.

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

…

twelfth

fourteenth ❄️

eighteenth

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

the collection

june

july

august

september

october

november

december

…

second

sixth

ninth

tenth

eleventh

twentieth

twenty-ninth 💋

…

second

twelfth

twenty-ninth 🦊

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

…

second 🌕

sixth

fourteenth 🌕

thirtieth

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

…

fifth

thirteenth

twenty-second 🍁

twenty-third

twenty-fourth

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

KEYCHAIN.

Walking two miles in the night rain, crying, shaking, nervous,

Feeling like Red Riding Hood,

standing on my grandmothers porch, How do I tell her,

her son’s the Big Bad Wolf?

She tells me in public that effort goes both ways,

That I need to try harder,

She knows that he’s made his choice,

That he doesn’t care and that he’s no father,

The fact that in public, she’ll tell me one thing

and in private, something different

It’s all an illusion and smoke screen.

I know that I was never important.

Holding that stupid keychain is proof that I never stopped trying,

So often I try to make plans and he’d put me off every time,

She’d look at me as I cried to her, with her own crocodile tears,

I don’t know how her son being a deadbeat isnt one of her biggest fears.

And so I left with that same keychain, not knowing what to do with it

Maybe I’d throw it in the woods or a lake, but I couldn’t go through with it.

I held onto that thing for a goddamn year and it taunted me every day

Until I eventually found the person it belonged to, the person with whom it was meant to stay,

I had a whole speech ready to recite upon giving him that keychain,

But of course, when it came time to actually do it, I had nothing in my brain.

I stuttered and rushed and mumbled hoping that whatever I said,

Would still carry its meaning and at the very least make sense.

To my surprise he actually cared, and used his words to convey,

How much he loved and was honored that I’d given him the keychain.

Immediately, he hung it up somewhere safe, making me feel like a daughter,

It was then that I realized I had missed out on what it felt like to have a father.

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

DRAWER.

I get the feeling and a strange sense,

that you’re glad that I escaped, that from there I left.

When our towns daily newspaper had talked about me,

I wonder if you bought that edition to see.

I wonder if somewhere you hide a secret drawer,

where you keep your memories and regrets,

Movie tickets, funeral cards,

newspaper clippings, and cassettes.

Do you go through that drawer while sitting on the couch,

The one my mother designed from the catalog?

That couch that has seen you through three marriages now,

The same one your new wife sits on?

I wonder what the difference between us is,

why we are the way that we are,

We don’t have many similarities;

The contrast is so stark.

Your opportunities were boundless,

You could’ve done anything,

your parents were married and owned their home,

you played sports in the spring.

But me, I didn’t have those privileges,

and it’s all because of you,

my childhood I spent bounced back-and-forth,

you divorced when I was two.

Mom raised me independently,

and independent I was raised to be.

Everything I’ve done is no part thanks to you.

Its all been because of me.

But even all these years later,

I know you’ve watched, and listened to the grapevine.

Even after everything that’s happened,

you’ve been proud of me all this time.

I wonder if someday when you’re gone and when I get that call,

I’ll go over to your place, survey, and start to comb through all,

your personal belongings, prized possessions, and some more,

But I wonder more than anything, if I’ll ever find that drawer…

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

NOVOCAINE.

I know attention’s what she craves,

while you reminisce of now lost days.

Lying in the bed you made,

This cautionary tale of novocaine.

“Listed on my Wiki page,

There’s a list of whom I’d been betrayed,

Alongside accomplishments and accolades,

that you missed while you were away.

“That same list tells of who I’d claimed,

As lessons I’ll take to the grave,

Those lessons struck me, taught me, trained,

You made me “love” tasting blood and pain.

“We both knew you’d never change,

And thus so, you set the stage,

to view the downfall of your name.

A name I now push from my brain.

“I chewed and bit my lips by day,

To stop from talking, as to not say

How much I hate you, but I refrained,

Because my mother taught me ‘Grace’.

“But I grew tired of this relay.

Why should I be the one to maintain

This toxic joke you call a family?

I grew up, while you grew afraid.

“That’s what kept me alive and sane,

Yet what keeps you quiet and ashamed.

The fact that your love slowly drained,

And it’s all on you, your choice, your mistake.

“All your promises were fake,

Waited for that phone that never rang,

The gardens of my mind I raked,

My own sanctuary, I’d make.

“The anger and fury that burns away,

your scorching guilt will never fade.

And at night you’ll lie awake.

while your dreams die, your ‘heart’ slowly breaks.

“You search for forgiveness everyday,

Desperately reaching out in vain,

hoping to grasp a new blank slate,

but you and I know that’s insane.

“You look in the mirror but see my face,

It’s too late now, you can’t escape.

A hollow shell is what remains,

The colors gone, it’s all plain.

“Behind that ‘bride’ of yours who’s vain,

Who’s really more your ball and chain,

She only said yes to have a way,

To meet those bills she couldn’t pay.

“So let this be your take-away,

Two have always played this game.

You’ve learned victory you can’t claim,

And I now walk a different place,

“I see your life stuck on this page,

From which you can’t turn, it’s in flames.

It makes me relieved to finally say,

‘From you, I’m the one who got away’.”

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

If no one’s told you yet:

Hi

I used to be so dependent upon you. Now I realize it was you who needed me to need you.

There’s a statue of you in the gardens of my mind.

Even when I’m treated bad, I will continue being good. Because I have a heart of gold, and gold doesn’t rust.

-abby

At least I have my cat.

“I stand outside looking at the moon, thinking of you somewhere also bathed in its light.”

Sorry about the clothes on my back being in the way when you stabbed me

“Even in my dreams, I run to you”

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

…

first

second

third — one, two

fourth

sixth — one, two, three

eleventh

twelfth — one, two

fourteenth

fifteenth

twenty-first — one, two

twenty-eighth

twenty-ninth

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

“I will never regret you”

“I miss the person I used to be when I had you.”

“I saw the back of someone who looked like you and my heart skipped a beat.”

LOVE, DEAR ABBY

I look back now and know that younger me is so proud

Let go of what doesn’t bring you happiness: feelings, objects, people…

“You are the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.”

“…and it was that day I realized it was hopeless; for I was simply a mosaic of everyone I’d ever loved.”

“And like the moon, I have gone through countless phases of emptiness before feeling whole again.”

For so long I only cried tears of sadness, that it feels magical to shed tears of joy.