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Do you ever have those days
when at the end you crawl into bed feeling like you're covered in the grime of minutes passed, caked in half-remembered pointless moments, and splattered with regrets for a day not fully utilized? No- Oh yeah, me neither. I'm always the most completely productive person I can possibly be. I do ALL the things. Every day... Definitely. Well not today. But most days. … Okay, I'm working on it? Alright? Sheesh. Get off my back. I'm writing this poem, right? That's something.
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"I'm awake."
I tell myself, even as my eyes begin to drift downward. My hands freeze on the keys, mid- "Im awake!" I can't end partway through a piece. My fingers click the metal, scratching and sliding until words form. One at a timme- "I'm awake now. Definitely!" Thank God for autocorrect. Pick up again where I left off. So close. What rhymes with toaster? Nevermind, this doesn't have a rhyme-scheme. Annnndd... done! Now I'll let myself sleep for real! There's something lurking in the darkness.
A small shadow staring at you with brightly glowing green eyes. You can hear it growling. It must be hungry. Don't worry, it's probably just your cat. Writers put so much time into polishing their work.
Hours can be poured into as single sentence. Something can look so nice and tidy on the paper, but as soon as you read it out loud, it crubmles. No, 'crumbled'. Wait... 'crumbles'... I think... Yeah. It crumbles. And if you stare at a word for long enough, you become convinced that you've spelled it wrong. Even if there is no angry squiggle telling you so... This is why we spend hours staring at a notebook or computer screen alone. Because we make a lot of weird faces while we try and decipher our own intentions, and try and figure out how we originally meant to spell our characters' names... See that menu there?
It's got everything we have. Read it. Then we'll talk. Flying creatures buzz about me,
filling the night with their efforts, finding me with light thumps and tickles, even as I try to swat them away. I stand amidst the one source of light, an open window illuminating the darkness. But you know what people always forget to mention, when they tell you to be a beacon within the dark, to guide the lost and lonely onward? It's wonderful, being a light in that thick black night. You'll just get smacked in the face a lot by bugs. Spiking blood sugar!
The candy! Invincible! ...drag...yourself...to bed. There are explosions to the left and right,
because the waiter brings Coke instead of Sprite. A God decides your fit for a smite, giving you malaria in your mosquito bite. You mistake a stranger for your sister- Nope! Here's some awkwardness instead. You just missed her! No one gets what you're trying to infer, or a new Ice Age now occurs. You fall down a manhole while you walked and read, or a passing football hit you in the head. Your mechanical pencil is out of lead, and in real life, you're actually scared of the walking dead. Never ask a writer "What could go wrong?", because Google Maps could be off by a full furlong, or your significant other could say "So long!", or aliens could decide they want to bring you along. "What can go wrong?" is now a game for me, because I can pull plot devices out of things I see. I like to say that this skill is the world's apology, for giving me my anxiety. The moon has faded from the sky,
leaving darkness and shadow to obscure the earth. The birds cry frantically, at the drawn-out absence of the light. Their panicked twitters and caws echo between buildings, but not to any human ears. That species which 'rules' this earth, sleeps soundly in their beds, unaware, and comfortable in their belief of a rising sun each morn. Other creatures begin to pick up on the avians' anxiety, and add their cries to the growing cacophony. But the humans yet sleep. No new light begins to shine, nothing rises above the nearby hills to chase away the shadows. The fauna starts to panic, bringing the noise to a higher and louder pitch, as they fear for the worst. The sun would not rise, as it did day after day, and the darkness would trap them forever. They huddle away, fear clouding instinct, as they await whatever is to come. But right as hope is leaving the last creature, the shadows begin stretching themselves, slowly away from the hills, and the light begins to seep back into the world. The creatures’ cries turn from hopelessness to gratefulness, as their fears are hidden away with the darkness. And as the humans finally begin to awake from their beds, all they can think about, is getting the stupid animals to shut up. The ducks leap into the water,
skimming its surface, carving v's into it, flapping spastically and cackling as they chase each other. More splash in after them, gliding with a shhhh that cuts through the white noise. Their swaths spread across the lake, until they eventually stretch and fade into ripples, then echoes, then faint lines that sink back into the smooth liquid. The sounds of the lake envelope me with the murmur of fishermen, the chirping of birds, a light breeze tossing the tree branches and grass. I lean back and begin to doze off, with the warm caress of sunlight on my cheek. Then one loud duck screeches, his laughter echoes across the lake. Again. This is the third time. He must really like his own jokes. A kid across the lake yells at him to shut up, echoing my sentiments. That might last 10 minutes. We'll see. In the meantime, my eyes close again. The lake is beautiful. |
Cheyenne Bramwell
I love to write, and poetry is one of my favorite ways to figure out what my brain is doing. 
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