Ama’s blue eyes stared back at her, as she surveyed herself in the mirror.

She grasped the edge of the sink tightly, as if it were the only thing holding her up. When life became too difficult to endure, she would sometimes look to the mirror to make sure who was there. It changed so often.

The tears ran down her cheeks, she let them be free. The multitude of emotions mingled and played together as they rolled down with her tears, leaving a trail from her eyelashes to the drain of the white porcelain sink.

She was happy to see that the woman looking back at her was indeed Ama. But not just any version of Ama, as there had been many variations of herself whom she had briefly met in this place. This was StrongHappyContentSoft-eyed Ama: someone new.

She let out a long, quiet breath, and remembered.

*

You woke up. You ate. You watched television. You went to school, sometimes. You did not write. You wanted to cry. All of the time. But your body would not allow you to. He would come home to find you rearranging furniture, He thought it was endearing. But you recognized it as a feeble attempt to gain some control over your life. You coped with your discontent by lying to yourself, to Him- that this was the life that you wanted.

You went to bed. You let Him touch you, allowed His body close to yours, all over you. You succumbed to his failing efforts to love you, the way you needed to be loved. Intertwining your bodies in an act of wanting, resentment (laced in a staleness that routine could only offer) you knew very well, that His love for you could never transcend His boyish conception of love. He could not, did not want to run with you. Something was moving, shaking within you, begging you to break free.

Thinking of your life, you felt- nothing.

You made the choice to volunteer. Fate held out its hands to you and offered two choices. Two places. And you chose Ghana, to try and help change lives; in any way you could. But surprise met you with a teasing smile.

You didn’t realize it then, but you were going to hurt Him. You were going to change both of your lives. You realize now, He never got a choice in the matter. This fact makes you feel responsible for his unhappiness. You try to shake it off. But it’s difficult.

When you arrived you gave a sideways glance in Kwame’s direction; a tall, skinny boy who had fallen ill. His body was slouched in his chair, his hand holding the side of his face. You did not take much notice.

This was the beginning of the end of the story of you and Him.

*

Volunteering was hard on your body but freeing for your mind and filling for your soul.

You saw this in Kwame, you noticed this in the way you worked together, speaking to people about malaria, distributing nets. The corners of peoples’ mouths would twitch, breaking into bright smiles in response to him. It was plain to see; he was goodness up close. His dark skin, wrapped protectively around his long body, glistened in the heat of the afternoon. The sun had no mercy on you, it touched the ends of your curls and turned them into fine strands of gold. The angles of his face jutted out in a way that boldly contradicted the sensual curves of his lips. You thought that he looked beautiful. You were happy, and he was the singular reason for your happiness in that moment. He looked back and smiled, offering his hand to you.

It made you think back…

“You only hold my hand when you’re drunk.” You waited, watching him intently, trying to read his face. Kwame looked at you, and said; “No”, so quickly, so firmly. After searching his eyes, you found hurt. He continued, “ I don’t hold your hand because we are on the project. But…o.k. I will always hold your hand. From now on.” He took your hand in his and smiled, happy to know you needed him.

The music was loud, your friends were laughing on the opposite side of the table. You looked at your hand in his and then back to his dark face. Your heart began to hammer against your chest, you couldn’t contain it any longer; as the words poured from your lips; “You have changed everything.”

*

Kwame looked at you with his serious brown eyes, as if he had just seen you for the first time. He sucked in his breath as if from shock. He spoke before thinking, before taking into account the people around, “You…you look so different…so different with your hair down like that.”

It had been raining. Your curls clung to each other, sticking to your freckled skin, relieving you of the humidity but not able to cool the heat from your cheeks, after hearing his comment.

His eyes softened, something warm had swept across his face, relaxing his whole body. He tilted his head as if to see you better. You knew what it was. Something fluttered in your stomach and reached to your throat-for a moment, you couldn’t breathe.

Guilt caused your stomach to squirm uncomfortably. You thought of Him and looked away.

*

You leaned against Kwame’s warm body as the taxi left the parking lot. He held you close while simultaneously holding your hand. You took in his face, looking up at him and saw everything your mind had realized on that rainy day.

Your body tingled. Your first reaction was to look away. You put your cheek to his smooth arm and gently rested your head against it for a moment. You felt his eyes on you and turned back. A mixture of love and sex hung in the humidity of the air. It weighed down on the two of you, forcing you to give in. Kwame tilted his head and gave you “the look”, as if there was no one else alive but you and him. Shivers rippled across your skin, waking it up. The next second, his lips were on yours, the warmth of his breath melted on your tongue as he kissed you softly and then hard.

Your lips broke from each other and he put his hand on the small of your back. Kwame looked at you with an unparalleled intensity, as he said, “I love you.” You breathed in slowly and put your head on his chest.

Kwame had burrowed himself into your gut. It was uncomfortable, strange but not an undesirable feeling to have him reach inside to the untouched, naked parts of you and have your whole life cradled in his hands. You realized that all he wanted to do was run with you. He understood you.

You ended it with Him.

*

His fervent fingertips left warm, red imprints on your skin. Kwame’s hands groped the length of your body in a burning, welcomed frustration as tension emanated off of his body and rushed into yours. It was like he needed to feel the whole of you- all at once.

Your lips, swollen from his kisses itched for more as you looked down at him. His hands cupped your hips, pulling you closer to him so that you took in his scent. You breathed in the smell of home. His heart rioted against his ribcage; you felt it vibrating against your stomach. Kwame’s breathing was beginning to return to normal as he rested his head against your body, pale even under the veil of darkness. You found everything he felt for you in the soft landscapes of his face, even before the words slipped quietly, lovingly from his mouth.

*

The day you left, you were going to walk away but instead, you took his face into your hands and told him you loved him. Your voice was steady but your hands shook. He looked down at you and told you he loved you in the same voice of certainty. There was something sad but ardent in the way he looked at you. He kissed you. It tasted like sadness and salt.

*

Ama took her hands off of the bathroom sink. She could now, stand on her own two feet. She felt balanced and centered inside herself. She took her hands and wiped the tears from her eyes onto her sleeve. Life was different now. There was so much to figure out. But this was a happy fact. She took one last look in the mirror, at StrongHappyContentSoft-eyed Ama and smiled a great, wide smile.

This was only the beginning of the story of Ama and Kwame.

I have found myself in unexpected places in life.

I find myself in such a place today. At first it is an unsettling fear that greets me and for a varying degree of time- I don’t know what to do. I understand now, that it’s when you allow that paralysing feeling of not knowing seep in- you finally open yourself up to the realm of possibilities that you were rejecting by knowing everything.

What is more, is that by taking your life into your own small hands, you realize that your life is your own. We limit ourselves by letting others (whether it is deliberate or unknowing) restrain us, dictate who we should be, what we should be.

If you had every means at your disposal, would you take the dreams that you keep?

I know where these thoughts come from. I understand that this optimism comes from a youthful place where life is still sprawled against a far off, untouchable sky. But I know a gift when I see one. My youth is my strength. Power. Love.

I won’t wait. My youth is now.

We were spirits, floating freely in the water.

The water held us in its cold, grey hands, it revelled in the warmth of our bodies. You tread closely to me, drawing me in. I realized just then, that it’s when people feel powerless, in moments such as this, their humanity is most undeniable. Small hours, like those we spent at the lake, can’t be wrong. They have there own place in time- that help the other more insignificant ones seem bearable, like they might even have their own specific purpose in the production line that life can sometimes be.

The water was see through, I could see your naked skin- I could see you. Like when we were kids and we didn’t need to hide anything and everyone around us was ageing but not us and we hadn’t realized that there were expectations we were to eventually meet, that people counted on us.  Wasn’t it nice, back then? Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, any bends in the road seemed to succumb to our will.

You were so beautiful that night. I saw you perfectly then. The flaws and the pain from everyday life fell from your face. It was like I had the privilege of seeing you in two places at once. Young girl and grown up person. Your laugh had changed from what I had remembered it to be. Your body was ghostly, your pale skin and the folds of your dress moving slowly in exaggerated sweeping motions, making the water ripple creating gentle crinkles in its once smooth face. I could see your nipples through your dress, it clung to you. Your hair wet, brushed back with the tips of your pruned fingers. You were so loveable. Girls and women don’t understand their beauty, they can’t appreciate it. Historically, it can be said that this fact has always caused men to go crazy.

All I wanted was one night with you.

We were grown ups, whatever that meant. You were going to be married to a go0d man. You may have even been in love with him- I will never really know. I was married. It was wrong what we were doing but it was perfect too. The reality of that moment would have been unfathomable to a younger, more youthful version of myself.

It was that night that I really became a man, I guess. No- I’m certain of it. I realized that there are gaps in between the maps within our minds, where right and wrong don’t seem to have a place. Sometimes we are just people and that is all. Our lives have no bearing on us, the weight of it somewhere abandoned, splayed on the floor along with the people we thought ourselves to be.

I wasn’t always in love with you. No, this has never been one of those long, strung out forbidden romances you read about or see. Our paths always crossing in the most minimal of ways; seeing each other at parties held by mutual friends or bumping into each other on the street. We were there at the same place, at the same time. I needed someone- someone else. I know that seems horrible but that is just the way it was. A reserved, quiet hello turned into a coffee and a coffee turned into a drive to the place that knew our childhood.

I needed someone to know me. Like no one else had ever known me. I think you did too.

I hope that when I am old and nothing works quite the way it used to I will still remember that night. It was a good night to be alive. With you.

Its been a long while, since I have been able to brush my hand against your face.

Three months since I watched you walk away. The image of your lanky, body moving farther and farther into the distance is sharpest today and all the other days like it. I hate today. Tears slither down my face, I feel more than a little pathetic and lonely. They are fearless in their plummet until they reach my chin, where they hesitate wondering if they should take the final leap into the blue fabric of my sweater.

I feel like I’m sinking. Slowly. I have never been lonely like this. I was me for so many years. And now…I am we. But I am alone.

I am not sure where our lives will take us. I don’t know how or where we will live. I don’t know how we will make money. But I know I love you. I miss you. I need you. I don’t know how to live without you. I know all the words to the song but I have no voice to sing it with. I’ve been crying for a while now. I want to stop. It would be nice to be where you are. Watching you smiling, laughing, sleeping. I feel like this is only getting harder. To be awfully plain; this sucks.

I remember that day we walked up to the mountain. We were with people but my heart only remembers us. You brushed the long grass against my skin, trying to make me laugh. You liked doing that. But now you do it through an impersonal computer screen. It’s not the same. You rolled up your short-sleeve and showed me your birth mark. I remember thinking, “what a funny shape”. I could feel myself being pulled into you, so quickly, so intensely as we walked. You were so in love with me. Holding your hand made me feel like I was grounded to the earth and walking on air at the same time.

I miss you. In the truest, most simple sense of the word. I miss you.

ingrid michaelson – can’t help falling in love

My dreams try to move me.

Throw me into the unpredictability of

chasing what you seemingly don’t need

to breathe.

But feel the dull throb of nothingness without.

In the hours when light crashes in

holding my body still

keeping me wrinkled within the plains of thoughtfulness

forming clusters, rolling, tumbling across my consciousness.

My eyes stretched open-contemplating childishness and settling.

Ambition thrashes.

I can not stop the wanting inside me.

A sort of innate craving.

It is the blueprints on my skin, the ink seeping deeper

deeper into the core of me.

Where only you have been.

I want-everything.

And nothing- in the same fleeting place.

I don’t know any other way than to run for you.

I only wish, while tugging at the sheets,

that they will not leave my hands

empty.

Do not wander.

You might find yourself in places of unfamiliar.

Stay in this place of monotany and cheap thrill.

Do not run.

The skin on your knees will remain unscathed-

Your heart will stay protected.

Walk without wonder.

Live?

Breathe steadily- knowing the road you take

with certainty of the security which lies ahead.

Be comforted by the weighty burden in your pocket.

Know that your belly will be filled.

Worry will not play with the lines of your face.

You have books.

The grey blue light will tell you-

what you need to know.

Smile without meaning.

Watch without caring.

Be content in your solitude.

Walk the long path home

to find

nothing.

It will be enough.

For you.

In and out. In and out.

My breathing, heavy

Chest rising, up and down, up and down.

Fear, beginning to let me slip through its fingers.

The nightmare has ended.

My eyes open to a weighty blackness.

I hear a scratching.

My head swivels in the direction of the window.

I only find you-the Moon.

I wonder, if you have a part to play

in good and evil…right and wrong.

I find myself wishing.

Wishing I could know what it is like to be

beautiful.

Wanting to be able to still everything into awe

like you make the night.

A twisted love shared between the two of you.

Loneliness has caught up with me.

So bright you are.

So greedy too.

I hate you. I hate you.

For this shadow you cast on me.

I am so mortal.

Vulnerable. Naive. Breakable. Temporary.

I am so human.

I smile, watching the red flash of numbers

Your time is almost up.

Soon the sun would scorch you out of the sky.

The darkness begins to lift and with it your pale loveliness fades.

Orange morning light obscures the shadows on the bedroom walls,

chasing darkness out from every corner.

It is 5 am.

Time to say goodnight.

Her blue eyes move slowly, searching and reaching out to the world.

Tall, wet grass and cold grey giants flicker in the corners of her cluttered mind. She looks down to her worn out, faded sweat shirt and notices the not-so-surprising coffee stain.  She shrugs it off, breathing in deeply. Thinking- always contemplating.

Tiny feet, losing their step. Falling down stairs. She remembers the shock which took hold of her body and clenched its fingers around her throat. It was a moment seemingly insignificant but had built a place inside of her, reminding her every once in while- for a reason that eludes her.

Her memory is selective in what it reveals to her. It has a hold on her emotions pulling them forward from the past, through time and placing them in the midst of her present. The corner of her lips move into a small smile, born from wonder rather than happiness or amusement.

It is funny what people remember of their lives. The mind is fickle and complicated. It keeps hold of what the heart and the body want. She wonders whether or not it makes the memories true or accurate.

A brown curl escapes the confines of a carefully placed hair pin. Lost in reverie she does not brush it away but stays tucked away in her mind, thinking, watching the cars chase the pavement beneath them, always trying to catch the yellow lines.

Her mind smells cigarette smoke. It forms the haunting figures of her parents, younger, happier but not really. Always fighting but somehow loving. Their words spewed out from their mouths in a complicated steeliness and strange almost, wrong affection for each other. One wanting, needing the other more. A sad and frustrating imbalance of fondness that transcended their relationship and into her. She remembers mistrust. An instinct moving in her stomach. She remembers not knowing why.

She remembers wanting a different kind of love for herself. She remembers wanting to treasure it because she knew it was a rare kind of thing.

She leaves that place and finds herself beneath a boy. Pushing, holding, forcing. His laboured breathing and her rigid, defensive body. She remembers being confused, fear penetrating itself in places security used to be. Did it make the boy a bad person? She loved him. He loved her. But it wasn’t enough. Most people would never think the boy the kind to do that sort of thing. She didn’t think him to be the sort of boy to be capable of that kind of thing. She remembers there being a light in him, shining through from the moment they met. Did she trick herself into seeing something that she wanted to see? Her feelings are murky- she has not settled on what this particular memory means. She wrestles with it.

Rushing from one memory to the next looking back quickly, trying to see what she couldn’t the last time she was in that place.  She see’s a dusty city. Hard, cement walls. A large, burgundy gate. Enclosed is sweetness and warmth. A little boy, laughing playing. A man, feelings exposed for all to see but only needing her to see. The smell of his skin engorges her mind. She smiles as she closes her eyes, his face- the image that she sees.

As much as the past plagues her, tugs at her the future bids her attention too. Sometimes she feels torn.  Life moving so fast, she cannot register it. There are no boxes, neatly filed. Her life pours from the edges like wet  ink from the pages of a book.

A final  memory breaks her thoughts, before she exits the train…the sound of her mother’s voice, soft and charmingly out of key, “Que Sera, Sera…Whatever will be, will be. The future’s not ours to see. Que Sera, Sera.”

The thick coat of fog bound and gathered my emotions.

I stood on the edge of the head of a cliff that had just recently been rained upon. My eyes scanned the land below the peak, at the edge of the reserve of Bear River. The fog was egging me on, provoking me to come completely undone.

‘I’ being- Alice. Sixteen. Brown eyes. Big, full mouth, which was fully equipped to say every sarcastic comment that made its way into my head. Messy bangs, to match my long brown, tangled hair. Short, curved body that I was obviously dissatisfied with. Awkward.

It’s a peculiar feeling to have so many thoughts darting through your head, carelessly and roughly striking the walls of your mind. I wanted to take off my skin, in the eerie sort of glow that was the product of the sun’s rays that did not waver, the ones which continued to persevere and break through the fog. I just wanted to shake off everything that had to do with being human because it seemed to me that I wasn’t very good at it.

My eyes moved to the tiny stain on my father’s tacky, yellow coat. I felt like the jacket, disregarded because of its obvious flaws. My father’s poor coat was never missed from the many others in his closet. I felt my fears grip me from my weakest point compressing and forcing out the moistness of tears.

I was the invisible girl. I was the unlovable girl. I was acutely aware of the pathetic nature of my thoughts and feelings. But I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t stop it.  It was absurd to cling onto something that he had owned, but I had convinced myself that by wearing the coat I could immerse myself in his thought process. I had hoped I would get to know him- just a little at least. Benjamin Pictu, my father, was a man who liked tacky, cheap looking clothes. He liked ketchup and corduroy.

As I carried on with my analysis of my father, series after series of questions interfered, stealing what little confidence I possessed. How much did I really know my father? Was Ben Pictu a man who ate ketchup on hot dogs? Or was it hamburgers that he preferred? Did he really like the colour yellow?

Absent mindedly, I began to slowly remove the coat. As my anger became all consuming my movements became severe. I looked to the sea down below then looked back to the coat in my hands. My rage urged me to do it. I let my finger’s slacken and watched the coat fall. My hands began to feel empty and detached as if a part of them had been severed. I turned my back quickly and walked away.

I felt like I was fading into a ghost of who I used to be, like the cold breaths being blown out of my mouth were parts of my soul floating away from me. I was nearing the trail that lead back down from the cliff when I heard the faintest splash. My heart contracted exaggerated, swollen pumps filling to the rim. The pain pressed and pushed until it penetrated through.

I heard my feet drum and beat against the ground in a panicked state to the edge of the cliff. The rain began to softly make contact with my skin, as I boldly, without fear from slipping, threw my head back and screamed. The insanity, the frustration, the anguish inside of me rose into a climactic rush which bounced off me, meeting the air.

It was then that I slipped, away into the nightmarish sea.

*

We used to sit on a cliff looking down at Bear River, the place where I called home. We would take the ferry down to Brior Island, a small lonely piece of land treading the Atlantic Sea. It was rainy, the kind of rain that would spit on your skin leaving tiny droplets of water. Slade bent down and kissed a droplet off the tip of my nose. I felt my pale cheeks flush to a shade of red. He had never done that before.

That night, I lay in bed, in the quiet dark and felt something wet fall down my cheek. I stopped its plummet down my chin with my tongue, it tasted salty and bitter. I wasn’t prepared; I didn’t know how to handle it. I hadn’t cried for him yet, I hadn’t let myself. It wasn’t as if his death was a surprise, it had been a long time coming. I dragged my hands down my face, and imagined it creak open in my chest. I heard it open, the door to what was his place in my heart. I shut it, and without a sound it was closed again.

I furiously wiped away any evidence of that lonesome tear and let my eyes roam around the room. I used to share my room with my older sister Cecilia, but she moved away. It was a quiet morning in March when she fled. I remember the distinct smell of newness and beginning stirring in the air as it danced into our room, in from the open window next to my bed. It was the smell that always came with Spring, the breaking of the ice, melting of snow and gradual rise in temperature. I remember that the sun was only peering over the horizon, as if it was not yet decided on giving light to Bear River, when I woke up to quiet rustling coming from my sister’s side of the bedroom.

I pretended to sleep, curious to see what she was doing. She left a folded piece of paper on the bed, for me. The letter had read, “I woke up tonight and I realized I can’t stay in this place. There has to be more. Remember, I love you.”

*

My mother’s shop has this one wall on the side of it that ‘s  covered in words. They’re scribbled chaotically in a plethora of colours, creating shapes that vaguely resemble letters. My penmanship has never been quite up to par.

I was weird with words, I liked them a lot, so one day I started writing words that other people had said on “my wall”. It didn’t matter to me whether or not they were famous. A lot of the quotes on my wall were from people I overheard talking while eating in the booth next to mine in restaurants or Slade, Mom, even the odd sentence my father would contribute.

Just then I rolled out of my bed, and walked the ten minute distance from my house to the shop. The air was cool around me, as I tucked my arms inside of my coat. I looked up at the wall when I reached the shop. “If I paid attention to what others were thinking the heart inside me would die.”, “Everyone is wearing a disguise to hide what they’ve got left behind their eyes.” I had written those two the year before.

As my eyes scanned the wall over and over again I spotted some quotes written from when I was younger, “The beauty parlour is filled with sailors” “The circus is in town”. At that moment I needed to write something else, something about my father’s death. I took my key to the shop out from my father’s jacket that I wore and unlocked the door. I grabbed a bucket of paint and walked out back to the wall.

My teeth began to chatter as I dipped the paint brush into the bucket. “I- AIN’T-SAYING-YOU-TREATED-ME-UNKIND”, I paused taking a deep breath and trying to make my teeth stop chattering so much, only to continue a second later, “-YOU-COULD-HAVE-DONE-BETTER” I grunted while I wrote them onto the wall, as if the words were sucking all the energy out of me. I looked back up at it, turned my back on it and walked home.

I slinked back into bed. I allowed my arms and legs to spread across the mattress. That’s the way I liked to sleep when I felt alone, at those times when it was too risky to call up Slade to spend the night (without Mom finding out). I would try and fill out the entire bed as if it would somehow help fill the void in my heart that seemed to only be getting bigger. I sighed in an unsatisfied way, a way that I was getting used to.

*

My mind suddenly flashed back to the waves pulling me under their cold, grey-blue cloak.

I was tired…so very tired. I wanted it to stop. I urged silently in my head as the waves torpedoed inside my nostrils, twisting and bending in serrated movements into my lungs. I vomited the salty water…until there was nothing.

Hardship seems to have seeped in at every imaginable crack, it spills and flows readily. I am knee deep, my skin prickles uncomfortably from the sharpness of disappointment and fragility of myself, of my life- at this moment.  Trying to fill in the cracks proves to be difficult, almost impossible. Discouraging, because I realize that there are so many imperfections which lie inside of me, quietly waiting to break.

Control is far away from me, a speckle on the horizon. There was a time when it was in my hands, clenched in my fist as my knuckles whitened. I let go for a second and it seems to have gotten away. I can’t catch it. I have lost it. I guess, its a good thing but a hard thing.

It causes me to shrink away, unconsciously as if through a learned self destruction, from playing with words and stories in my head. But something is different this time, I have caught myself in this place of self deprecation. Pushing myself to use the words to alleviate the pressures on me. I think…it’s working.

I was where I belonged. I felt it in my bones. Now I am here…it seems for a reason. I guess to really look at myself. I have to learn to carry the weight of me, by myself. Not that I don’t have someone to help me. But I have to learn to do it for myself. I have found that I am heavy with burden, some which is self-made, some of it created by the world. Working on yourself is hard. And I have been failing. But I’ve realized that, at least. Maybe now I’ll change.

I have to trust the lines snaking the length my palms. I will be where I want to be. But I have to be here first.