6

I remember that time when the lion came. He came to me in my dreams. I thought he looked familiar, but know I've never been to the circus. I climbed onto his back nonetheless, and his fur from his mane licked my cheeks. He races in the forest in every direction I point him in. He climbs in trees and catches me food. I am his child and he loves me. I rest my head on his soft hair and I start to fall, his growl is the only thing that would reach me.
I can't see because I haven't opened my eyes. I feel the hot, sticky air pass through my clothes and hair. I can feel it's breath behind my ears. The space I'm falling in can feel me. I can understand the very atoms in space, they are whispering to me in unison as one entity. I am afraid to open my eyes, but when I do nothing is here. I'm just lying down on cold cement. I am alone. In a dark city. I can't hear a soul, not even those little fragments. Fear grasps me from every inch of my body. I start to run. My sneakers are the only sounds resonating on the buildings. Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap tap. My breath is smoky and I can feel the sharp pains in my sides. Those fragments have turned against me and came inside me. They are stabbing my stomach, making me groan. I run as far as I can. Orange lights are illuminating my path and my sweater is soaked in blood. I jump into a puddle and I am swimming away from the tall scrapers and the red sweater. The orange light is barely creating a glow under here, and my breath is coming quicker yet my lungs feel fine. I try to kick my legs towards fringe of air but for some reason my muscles feel like magnets. My legs seem all wrong. I pull my underwater hair, which seems to have grown since I woke up, away from my face and notice my limbs are now, in fact, one. My once pale and bruised skin is now an collage of opal scales, the orange light only just casts a sheer on it. My feet are toe-less and in their stead there are luminous fins trailing away from me. I wiggle my fin and I am pushed forward through. I writhe in my new half and I jet though the water like the true swimmer I am. I don't remember running or what it even is. I flutter myself to the depths of the ocean like a moth in black satin. Once again blackness is around me. It feels cold. Colder than ice. Am I freezing? Is my heart beat-less? Am I dead? I must be, for this is the blackest black; no one can even begin to imagine it's pitch.

I hear a sound. The sound of the heaven above me. it sounds angry and envious. It thunders though the water like an old echo from another dimension. The ocean opens and explodes into the air. I feel gravity for the first time and I feel heavy even though my body is floating in the sky. I notice small drops of glass water falling down to the waiting sea. I think I'm falling too fast. Too fast indeed, if I hit that water as fast as I'm going now, I am going to split. The water will feel as though it's glass and I will break. My insides with be outside and I will no longer be able to swim. I flap my arms try to grasp into the air and suddenly I am lifted. I desperatly try and hold onto that feeling again and the same results ensue. Higher and higher I become until the ocean is just a color. A blue on the world. My wings brought me to safety, and I am within the clouds. No fears up hear just the wind, the sky, and the sun, and the moon. The moon is so bright tonight. I am so ridiculously happy. I fly in circles; and in between the cotton whale. In the sky I try to remember how it felt to breath water, but this air is making me woozy and it's too sweet to help. I glide through the wind and with the wind. It helps me and makes me stronger. I feel water once again on my body, but I do not breath it. It washes me and it feels now that I have nothing to be sad for. I have first touch of holy water. I am reborn. I look higher up for there cannot be any better than this. And suddenly I catch my breath and almost choke on it. I see white diamonds strewn over black sand. I'm below an even bigger ocean, a bigger more better ocean. I see the moon for what it really is. Its the mother pearl of these diamonds and she shows me their hiding spots and tells me to follow the path to them. I go higher up. I push my wings past my weight and go faster. Faster and faster. Once i pass a certain point i know there's no going back. I look one last time to what I thought was all, and I blink away my tears. Faster and faster. The air around me is thin and I feel light as one of my feathers. My breath once again is being torn into my sides, every exhale feels like my last. I breath in a shallow gasp and my eyes see lightness. Everything is white. Have I lost conscience? Am I in heaven? Everything is so bright and clean.

I try and move my wings but instead of bones and muscles I feel nothing, yet i know it's okay. Am I even seeing with eyes? Once I think this, my vision is placed behind me and I see a terrestrial body. I move my arm and part of the form moves. It looks pure and clean. The most white you could ever imagine. I was. I am. Finally in the the heaven I sought, I am a star.

5

5 laying down. just thinking. and then that small bit above your eyebrow starts to hurt. everything is wrong all of a sudden. your stomach feels too large and empty, yet it feels filled with liquid gas. you're going to explode, you feel it coming the end.

4 you wish for it to come faster and suddenly it takes its time. things start heading the wrong direction, the wrong speed; like a drunk driver on a rainy night.

3 and you have to just keep lying there and facing the storm. can you do anything really? isn't just lying there doing something? taking a stand you could say.

2 watching the countdown for your own hands to start choking the air out of you. why decide? why chose something? if you don't something is already being done anyways. Oh i see to have it your way.

1 well, thats the reason im lying down, im dodging bullets of blame. if i don't agree im not wrong if i don't disagree im not right.
this is my protest.

0
against.... myself, my life.

4

i keep feeling this uncomfortable choking feeling in my throat, like something is in it. I try reaching it, spitting it out, cough it up, but to no avail. it just feels like i have to vomit. it's behind my tongue, it might'v traveled my body; from my heart or under my brain, but it won't come out. sometimes i wake up and it's already there, waiting to prick me inside. sometimes i try swallowing it down and that makes me better, but after a while the sensation always comes back.

3

i had this friend when i was just turning into a woman. a young woman actually. i just had found the secrets of make up as well as secretive boys, and i was beginning to let my hair down. as my transformation was blooming, i met one of my closest friends. he was a boy turning into a man, a charming young man; yet still older than i.

We had met at school between a mutual class. it was a class i really hated because i had to wear this ugly ill-fitting, military uniform. it was completely embarrassing, i hated that class and dreaded every wednesday. surprisingly that was one of the few classes i passed. as i had let on earlier this is the class my friend and i had together. he was one year older so his post was above me, i didn't exactly start off on good terms with him. he yelled at me during drills, laughed at my baggy pant suits, marked off points accordingly like a true captain would do and he was really cocky. he would pick at people with small attitudes, perhaps to toughen them up or because he was still just kind of a boy. he was extremely good looking and he knew it. he wore his handsome face with pride and had a swagger to his step. he'd flirt with girls without trying, and they flocked to him feeling safe and content. i began to understand why all the girls in my class liked him. when he starts to talk to you with his strong jaw bone, and he is truly interested in you; all his attention is focused into this intense awe just directed at you. and you think to yourself, "why would he be talking to me?" he would or wouldn't. that's it, he didn't bullshit with politeness, and knowing this, his attention was a rare and honest thing. he was a smooth talker and an easy listener. as they say bird with the same feather flock together. i was a girl curious about boys. i fell in love with my captain.

i didn't fall in love with him so quickly though. i first became best friends with him. it was a slow process. every night he'd sneak in the room me and another friend would be waiting for him innocently. Because we had just begun to grow, sex didn't even really cross our minds; just being in a room with the opposite sex was enough. we snuck out daily to meet each other, to basically do nothing at all. it might seem romantic, but in fact it was naive and child like.
that's when i started to fall in love. when the barriers started to come down. we were all getting more and more comfortable with each other. we would cry on each-others shoulders if our home life was becoming unbearable. we would pour out truths if everything seemed too damned difficult to hide. and when it became to hard to wake up we would sleep on the other side of the each others bed. we were a pack and we ran together. we roamed the neighborhood and ruled the rooftops together.

friendships became stronger and friendly feelings started to rollover in other waves. i began to sink under my growing infatuation. he didn't seem to mind; if we got a little too tipsy we would kiss lightly, when he stared down at me my cheeks would blush under his eyes, and when he would lay his hand on mine so sweetly i saw stars. i could tell he was changing, hanging out with us let him do so. you could say it was on my own fault that i became heartbroken. after perhaps a little more than a year of fancying him, he came out to me.
the love of my life told me that my gender wasn't to any interest in him. in fact, he would rather willingly love a man instead. a large, hairy, smelly, penis wearing man. if anything; what i could do was minimal, and maybe even disgusting. i wasn't exactly surprised when he told me he was homosexual; i had thought he was for a while, but to realize i never really had a chance just made it more bitter. i didn't handle it well, i wanted to be alone. i couldn't face him, he knew of my affection. i know to this day he did, that's just how he is. that smug cocky man. he led me on because he felt more handsome. i don't mind now, but then i was so angry at him. he didn't even think twice about me. i was just some... little girl. didn't matter if i was a woman either. he wanted a strong man. i couldn't be one for him.

i came around after awhile. i didn't reject him for his sexuality... even though that's basically what had happened to me. but i licked my wounds and hopped back into the circle with the new-found knowledge of Manny being gay. we ruled the rooftops still and ran at night. in retrospect i think i took it well. at least compared to his family i did. i remember this one time, a few weeks of him telling me he and his family had this BIG fight. i was waiting for him in his car, he kept it running just in case "in case of what?"

"just in case."

as i was turning the knob to the radio i heard screaming. i turned off the fm sound and louder and louder the yelling became. there was a silence and i heard Manny shout really loud and broken. hearing him like that made me want to get out of my seat and to help him but before i could i heard something like a bang and i saw Manny run out towards the car. he was crying and we raced away, away from his house and away from the people whom i wasn't.

i think that's why he reached out to us. he needed to... be who he is. im not saying Manny is gay because of our friends. He would've came out eventually of course. im just realizing that that young woman fell in love with her best friend because he, by accepting himself, he fell in love with us.

2

my head was splitting open from the night before. the super bowl night. after the game ended my friends and i had gotten into a dispute, and i found myself at home alone drinking what i was supposed to be sharing with them. it was a pretty big bottle with most of it still there. let's just say the toilet was the only person i ended up hugging that night. Go packers right?
well as i was saying, my head was dividing into fourths and it was a school day so i forced myself up from my comfortable bed. i grabbed all my school stuff and spent ten minutes looking for my headphones. i brushed my teeth and grabbed an orange on my way out. i pushed in small speakers into my ears and started peeling as i walked. on my way to the bus stop, this random girl and i make that weird eye contact. the one where something passes in between the two people. where it seems like you know the person. perhaps we knew each other in another life, because i definitely didn't know her from this one. i shrug it off as i push an orange slice into my mouth. after maybe four slices i see her car again turn a corner, and come towards me. as she pulls over i scan her face and desperately try to remember her from a drunken night, or a class from high school. nope; nothing comes up. she pulls over and a mix of words come from her mouth. at first it seems another language; like a mess, jumbled and excited, "have you seen part of a city?" "do you know what a gypsy is?" i totally am confused, because for half of the time my ipod was blaring and fruit juice was dribbling down my neck. after a few minutes of jumbled mess i finally hear her clearly, "Hi, my name is Gypsy and i come from Party City." i am still sort of confused but i regain my manners and introduce myself. "hi, I'm Paul... from here." "hi Paul. Do you like magic?" i look at her like she's crazy, and notice her clothing. it's all crazy colors. purple, gold, olive green, and it looks like she is in fact a gypsy from a circus or something. i wouldn't be surprised if she showed me a magic trick right then and there. i nod my head dumbly. "yes i guess." "Well i've never met a non traveller like myself, and if you aren't busy then why don't you hop in and we could stop being strangers and start being friends?" her voice seemed friendly enough. i look around to see if this is a joke or something and i notice everything around the car looks dull and hazy, the only things solid and bright are her eyes. i wipe the orange dribble from my chin and notice my headache is only faintly being given attention. i shrug myself in her car and it's smokey. She laughs at my smile in a way i can only describe at lovingly. I am so happy i got in her car. she speeds off into the sky.

after we park on some unknown spot to me, she begins unraveling a pipe. she tells me it's only a little strong. i inhale the grass already having doing it before. in an instance i feel it's effects. she touches my skin, as if she never felt another person before, i let her. she asked for a kiss on the cheek in exchange for a story, i oblige. she tells me a tale so wonderful, it's hard to remember. i do remember that the ending had me in tears and happiness. i cheered like a child and she handed me the pipe again. i almost greedily smoke; she has me so relaxed. i pass it to her and she smokes just as deep. we look at each other with red puffy eyes and start to hum. or i think we hum, it could have been in my head. we bop our head to her drumming on her dashboard and she seriously starts to scream. she is moaning like a cat. it begins to vibrate my body and something inside of me stirs. i began to scream as well, i let it all out and i felt a ghost pass through my ribs. if i waited any longer i would have exploded into jealousy. i realize my eyes are closed and i open them. we are sweating. we open a window and the outside comes in and the hot-boxed car can breath. we share a cigarette and exchange numbers. she drops me off on the bus stop as it's just coming from around the bend. "lucky we made it" she said as i crawl out. i say to her "i'm lucky i met you." i close the door and look at her one more time. she says to me her last words, "luck had nothing to do with it, it was fate."

1

there was once a woman who was loved by the wind. the wind would lick at her face greedily and he would taste the warmth from her. because of that her skin would dry and she would quickly escape into her house. when she would finally go outside, he would gust by and grab her at her dresses. her face would turn red, and she would have to walk the other way. he tried instead to caress her hair, but she would get angry and drive more instead of walk. the wind did not enjoy this, he would call out her name softly at first then to voiceless scream, having her feel insane. all it did was make her turn her back to him even more so.

after years of chasing her, lifting up her skirt and acting foolishly boyish, Wind turned bitter. he would weep uncontrollably sometimes, drowning the world in his sadness. he would whip all those who crossed his path; rip out massive things and throw them as hard as possible. no pity came from her, just fright and sickness. the wind went away to avoid being dangerous and ha traveled the world, never forgetting her. the wind saw new faces and followed other women who noticed him in a way the first never did. he enjoyed company of others and they enjoyed his. he would notice the woman getting smaller and smaller in his mind. after many years he found himself leaning near a window looking in at her. he didn't realize it was her at first... she looked older, he could tell by the lines in her hands and face. yet she was still so beautiful. he wasn't peeping, for she was crying not undressing. seeing her cry made him start to tear up as well, and his drops pit pattered on her house. her crying became more incessant and they cried together harmoniously. the woman looked outside of her window sill and noticed the teardrops hitting the glass. roused with emotion, she walked outside still crying, and was drenched by the winds devoted tears. she reached her arms out towards the sky, towards the wind; and he delightfully and gently held her. she cried on and on until they both had no more tears to drop. as her eyes dried the wind stopped carrying drops in the air. the wind encouraged the sun to come out and she smiled. the wind smiled around her and warmly dried her clothes. she finally noticed the wind and he was happy.