People

I started writing this one 8 months ago, but never really found the inspiration to finish it. For some reason, inspiration is hitting me like a hailstorm today, so here’s the finished piece.

Posts tagged “People” are short pieces inspired by people I know in real life. No naming names here~

Also — Checkout this cool photo I took when we went hiking! 😀

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I couldn’t understand her the first time we met. She was loud–so loud, and her laughter bounced like a bowling ball across the nervous tension of that room filled with complete strangers. The way she spoke had a curious lilt, her sentences always rushed towards the periods like she was scared they wouldn’t have a chance to be spoken fully. She spoke a lot, and listening to her talk was like listening to roller coaster scream down a metal track.

Three years ago, I could recognize her voice from a mile away just by the sound of wind whistling past her words. People here are nicer than most, they remember to drop the stones they hold instead of throwing them at things they don’t like. Despite that, she used to cause people to pick up an awfully many number of rocks. I remember wondering why she never noticed all those stony stares and pained laughs scattered around her path.

At one point, I asked her if she tripped a lot when she walked.
“Oh, I do.” She had laughed, meeting my slanted gaze with confidence. “But I don’t mind it now.”
“Why?”
“I’ve learned to like myself.”

A cliche one-liner from the mouth of any other,  but I knew her words were formed by the kaleidoscope of purple bruises on her shin where she had collided with those dropped rocks. Her answer struck me like a knife. At that time (maybe even now), the thought of liking myself felt like a lonely dream. I remember this single moment as the one when I thought that we just might be able to be friends.
“Why?”

She responded slowly, quietly, so as to make it clear that the words she spoke next were important.
“Because if I don’t, how can anyone else?”

 

She tells me that she feels like a circular puzzle piece.

And though I know she’d never tell me why, I have a pretty good idea of the reason anyways. She yearns for his love, and brandishes an eraser as proof of her dedication.

“I like girls that are nice” He says, so she demolishes the castle of her convictions and redraws her beliefs in sand.

“You have nice smile” He says, so she pulls the edges of her tears into those upward crescents, smiling, always smiling.

I tell her she’s over-reacting. “People say that stuff all the time.”
She smiles back, “I know.” 

But she doesn’t. Her soul has no edges, she’s blurred away anything that could possibly maim his perception of her virtue. People say that lovers are puzzle pieces that fit together prettily. How does a circle fit with anything?

-Sophie

I never know if I’ll have to wear a helmet when I talk with him. Sometimes, his haphazard words fly like bullets, pelting the air around him with the staccato of indifference. Sometimes his words are exactly what I need,  a sharp jab at the side to pull me back together.

I don’t know if he can feel the thumbtacks spilling out of his mouth when he speaks. Even though he’s mastered positioning the tacks so the sharp ends shoot straight out of his mouth instead of poking him, I know the pins prick his cheek anyway. I wonder if he winces at blood pooling in his mouth, wishing he could speak in feathers.

When he’s careful, his thumbtack arrangements are almost art. He can pin anything together, be it art, ideas, people, dreams. Sit down for a moment with him, and he can arrange fuzzy dreams into color. Come with a broken heart, and he can pin it back into shape. I love watching him talk, watching him pluck ideas from the air and mounting them to reality.

When he’s not careful, he spills his thumbtacks everywhere. He says he doesn’t mean to, but every time he opens his mouth he pours another box of tacks over my head. One cut is nothing, but a hundred little cuts smolder for the next week as I quietly water the fire in my heart with tears. I’m not the first. He will never see my tears, but I wonder if he’s ever watched someone cry with his thumbtacks pinned to their bleeding chest.

He speaks in thumbtacks. And though I know it’s important in keeping everything together, sometimes, I wish he would speak in feathers.

-Sophie

I haven’t taken a photo of a sunset beach yet, but I do have this pretty one of sunset on a mountain! Hope it’ll suffice. 🙂

She reminds me of home. Not my home, or her home, just the idea of “home”. She can talk for ages and I can sit for just as long, basking in the drama of her escapades. As I’ve gotten to know her better, I’ve realized that a few of her stories are tinted blue. When she tells them, I can almost hear the way the words tilt towards the past.

Sometimes, I can catch a glimpse of her soul between the syllables of her tales and the sound of her laughter. It’s exactly the way the ocean bends sunlight at dusk. I’d like to keep looking at the glitter on the horizon, the seafoam on the shore, but the glimpse lasts only a moment before I’m reminded that sunset means its time to return home.

I think, perhaps, she likes the peace of the empty twilight beach, which is why sunset is so clearly demarcated in her stories. So, when she begins to speak with those notes of sunset playing against her breath, I know it’s time to leave her home for mine.

-Sophie