Girl

She is born. She is the light of her parents’ eyes. She is their one and only. Her father becomes a father the second he holds her for the very first time. Her mother is full of joy and her eyes beam with life. They both have something new to live for, a mere 7 pounds of pure bliss. Her grandparents shower her with love and gifts, care and attention. She keeps her first time parents up all through the night, not allowing them to get proper sleep. As a toddler, she goes to the yellow and blue park in her pink and blue windbreaker and to the black and red themed park in her Bulls sweatshirt. She swings on swings soaring high in the sky, slides down slides deep in the earth, without a care in the world and the brightest smile you ever did see. Despite her being fun and care-free, she is a quiet girl at daycare, making friends with other quiet girls and energetic boys. She fills her mind with thoughts of Barbies and stuffed animals. She uses her never-ending imagination all through the day, one a woman only wishes to have. She is now in preschool, a Montessori preschool at that. She has nap time and beings Valentine’s Day cards for everyone, so not one person feels left out. Each day when her mother appears through that door, showing that familiar face, she runs into her arms. In kindergarten, she has snack time and story time, and fun times all around. She now begins the next six year journey of her life at a school that boasts “Best in the universe!” In the first grade,   she is placed in advanced reading and for this, she feels embarrassed when getting called out of class to read Flat Stanley. Again, she gets nervous when it is her time to read her part in the Thanksgiving play. Her first tooth falls out while eating a chicken nugget during lunch. She is scared and does not know what to do. In the second grade, she thinks a sixth grader is cute and hides under a desk when she cannot stop laughing or if he looks at her or all the times she feels…embarrassed. In third grade, she remembers when those two towers fell. She is curious and peeks into the adjoining room. She cannot make sense of what she is seeing on the television, and continues to see at home, and hear continues to hear about for months ahead. Time passes, but the events of that day are never forgotten, contrary to the love that used to exist between her mother and father, however. They divorce.   Still too young to understand why, she moves on; unhurt and apathetic. Fourth grade is just another year, signifying how her journey here is almost over. In fifth grade, braces were introduced. Those braces. They were just something else to make her unhappy about her appearance in what was already a time of change and growth and questions. Next was the clarinet. That clarinet. Now-the sixth grade; she is the head honcho, the boss, the master of her domain (for this year, at least). This journey is now so close to being over, she can taste it. She passes notes to a boy and he passes them back. This never leads to anything more because she is unsure of herself and not self aware, awkward and big. She and her friends help the janitor with cleaning up after lunch since it is what the cool kids do, and who does not want to be cool? It is a twelve year olds dream to be cool. Now seventh grade comes along. That time already? She no longer feels cool, as she is a small fish in a big sea instead of being at the top. She is out of place and her only option is to become a follower, to not be weird and different out of fear of sticking out, but instead a copy to fit in. She only wears expensive clothing since that is what she sees everyone else wearing. She has one true friend with whom she establishes a routine with: every Friday, the one day both girls look forward to, they buy a Pizza Hut stuffed crust cheese pizza and watch movies. With this comes a sense of belonging and the feeling of being alone diminishes. She is still playing the clarinet, now having a few years’ experience under her belt. It has taken a year to become first chair, as it has taken a year to find herself and become her own person. No longer does she care about snide remarks from boys or what girls gossip about or what the cool clothes are to wear. Insecurities slowly and minimally creep back in, as she leaves all that is familiar and becomes a new student in a new district in a new town in a new grade. She has to make new friends, something she is not used to doing, being the shy and mousey girl that she has grown up to be thus far. Four years of high school go by, slow at the present but fast in retrospect. On Friday nights, she goes out and comes home, goes out and comes home. She has made friends by now, who have helped mitigate the journey and guide her alone the way. What lies ahead is a mystery, just as it is a mystery to how has gotten this far. There will be hurt to experience, just like the hurt experienced when her grandfather died. She thinks about how he will not be able to see her graduate high school or watch her grow up past the eighth grade. She still thinks how life would be had he lived to see her go off to college and what a fine young lady she will grow up to be. Time goes on and emotional wounds get half healed-he will never be truly forgotten. The values of which she has been taught by him and other family members will also never be forgotten. Nor will her friends that have contributed to her personality. Nor will her boyfriends. Nor her education, however tough it may have been at times. Nor her father who left at age eight. She will go home again someday four years from now. And then leave again. And maybe not come back so soon, or ever. She needs time to start a life and family of her own. She will have kids most likely. She can only hope to raise a child as she had been raised. The numerous times she has cursed her mother’s name hid the fact that she is awed and grateful for how she was brought up. She will grow old and watch as her daughter bares a child who will be the light of her daughter’s eyes, as the light is drained out of the woman’s.

Moments

What I long for is being close to you, and to have you whisper in my ear. You could whisper anything and it could give me chills and make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. When laying next to you, I start to breath faster and all thoughts leave my head. I yearn for your soft touch on my skin, running your fingers along my curves. I never want to leave from this place. I just want to lay here and never move, I want this moment to be frozen in time.

You

The pitter patter of the rain on my window makes me miss you terribly. It's times like these that make me long for you, to be close to you, to hear your breathing and feel the hot air on my neck. I want to waste the night away in bed with you laughing, talking, making love, or enjoying the simple yet beautiful sound of the rain caressing the rooftops.