Screechy Echoes

What's your story today? Did the freak show from many days away come to visit you? Did you hurt like the day you were to hurt then? Did it chop off some beloved injuries from your loving heart? Or did it spill your guts on a broken tarp? Did you feel the daggers pinching your old stab wounds? Or was it digging its heels into your ardent blues?

What's your damage today? Did you let go of yourself enough in the wind? Or did you tuck yourself inside for the hurt to just rescind? Did the thorns up your ego for you to bolt and run? Or did the tinted flowers trick you into sitting out this one? Did you face it with a lively face and land inside a ditch? Or did you stroll away, closed throat, to not make a glitch?

The vague lines in your forehead screech a thousand ways. Echoing their way through each of your days.

Mulch

There came a time when he was calm, collected, and reassured of himself. It all went into splits and rearranged to form a vent of sorts, running smoke like clockwork.

One day, it poured heavily. The smoke, mixed with the big fat drops of bliss, seemed to create a ruckus on the roof. Like a thinly spread layer of gloom mixed with gladness, it hovered till the sun came out. He stayed inside, working to figure out why he was suffocated.

Over a decade or two went by with thicker layers of mulch on the roof. He waited for it to pass. Slowly and painfully.

And then what happened, you may ask of me. He decided to look outside. He saw that the sun had come out. It had actually been a visitor for years, but he just wasn't ready for it.

He stepped on to the roof and saw that a layer of sunny wisdom covered the strange mulch. Everything went quiet for a while. The roof was still filled with mulch, but a quiet mulch. He hadn't felt that quiet in...what was that? Decades.

It was not long before the storm arrived and cleared the roof. Suddenly, he could breathe again. He could see the smoke exiting his home, like clockwork, again. It dawned on him how oblivous he had been to the fact that the mulch was clearing every now and then.

Then why has he been feeling so suffocated all this while? He resigned to his fate and waited for it to pass, yet again.

He was hopeless and dull. For days and days and days.

He peeked onto the roof one day and discovered the bliss of a clear night full of stars and calm. From the roof, he looked at the night sky and went into a sudden trance with white light and melodies. He felt the presence of the mulch and looked around to find it.

It was a moment of revelation for him to find that the mulch that was no longer on his home, but still in his being. He let the white moonlight flood him with peace, and then something died a slow, peaceful death. The imaginary mulch inside of him was let gone, one piece at a time.

He blissfully coexisted with the many seasons of mulch and tranquility happily ever after.

Cushioned

She held on to her words with a sense of numb relief. The relief that she wouldn’t have to take the brunt of his words that overpowered her warm, snuggly self. She rose from her chair and began walking toward the door, gasping for air that she did not share with him.

Don’t get me wrong, he was not the reason for her plight. His innate magnetism would charm anyone in the room without a miss, to the extent that even she swung from end-to-end before falling into his arms.

So what was that speck of doubt she had in her mind? Well, let’s just say that she was not conditioned to fall in love like the other people in her life. Everyone falls in love differently. She was unmistakably nonchalant for an audience that really wanted to sway with her every move. Hold her, but only for the support she would give back. Smile at her, but only with lies on their lips. Love her, but only for the wisdom she would spell out.

Feeling sorry for her yet? Don’t. She doesn’t.

Then what made her move from this amazing self to a breathless baboon in seconds? Was it something that had been inside her all along? She possibly let go of those grey areas from her healing book, but who was to say new greys didn’t grow?

After all, her life had been several shades of darkness before a few stripes of yellow, red, blue and green showed up. Heck, she even pulled off the darkness with class. Imagine what she would do with those damned colors.

She finally reached the door and dove right into a free space of utter indifference. A firm believer of her ruminations, how could she be held responsible for what gets tuned into her vivacious brain? On normal days, it would just make some fine moves to receive an applause from souls similar to hers, and make them less deserving souls cringe from an insight into their own flaws.

She just wanted to let go of the darkness that resided in her eyes to pave a new path of indifference that would cushion her positivity around and within herself.