Oh, My Darling. I Know You Are Not A Cathedral, But Youre No Less Holy.

Oh, my darling. I know you are not a Cathedral, but you’re no less holy.

- Unused bits from a never-finished book

“ You are so brave and quiet I forgot you were suffering.”

- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms

Tales from fiction writing class

Something you remember but you’re not sure why

I don’t know why I remember the light brown mushrooms that would sometimes grow by the flagpole. 

Sometimes, in the early hours of the morning, when I would be a safety patrol at my elementary school, it would be my job to raise the flag outside at the front of the building. The pole was surrounded by a circle of concrete that was surrounded by a circle of yellow and purple marigolds. On the side closest to the building, occasionally, there would be a mushroom that would grow there. 

Somedays, I would walk over it and try not to notice it, giving it only a sideways glance. Then, somedays, I would enjoy stepping on it and feeling my shoe softly squish it down into the dirt. I would never touch it with my hands because it could be poisonous and it would get in my mouth and kill me. 

I stomp it down then wait a month for it to regrow then I stomp it back down. Then the school gardener found out about it constantly regrowing and pulled it out by the roots and I was sad.  

That scene where Bolin rips off his sleeves hits different

For J

I'm not asking you to love

To be honest I don't know if I could return the feeling 

But if I could ask something of you 

I would ask that you pine after me

That you think about me when you look out over the rolling hills as you drive to work

Or that you can still feel my kisses long after I have left you 

The way I giggled when your nose touched my neck for the first time

That you swear my perfume is still on your clothes no matter how many times they go through the wash

I want you to sit alone and overhear a conversation and remember something that I said and then you laugh to yourself but get embarrassed because the people who see are judging you and really try to transport me there with you 

That sometimes you can feel the ghost of my hand against your palm. 

Then it grows and covers the rest of your skin, like an itch that's odd yet comforting 

You rub your fingers together, wondering if you're going crazy 

And as your day goes by, you notice sexual innuendos in everything, like who many times can a person hears the words " climax" and " erupt" and natural grunts and sighs in an English class and not think about them coming out of my mouth and how good it feels that you're the reason why 

That you sit in your car and think about the excitement and fear and warmth and shivers that wouldn't stop expelling from your body as we dove on the highway and you prayed that I wouldn't notice 

That you pass by people and places and think that you see me or that you can magic me coming around the corner into your arms but you are not that lucky 

That you get jealous whenever you just see a Hispanic woman with another man 

That your fist clenched with bitterness and unshed tears because why can't you have that 

That you think about getting in your car and driving 3 and a half hours to come to my town and you will find me and spend every moment after in my dorm on my twin bed

Singing hymns and love songs into each other's skin

But then you realize that's way out of line and just end up wondering what color my comforter is 

Then you start to look at my Instagram a lot 

An unsettling amount and feel gross doing it but…

There's only like three photos and they're old 

You hope that I'll post anything just to be sure I'm not a figment of your imagination

That you can see me and hear me and feel me

You find my Facebook that hasn't been touched in months 

Other posts with me in them from other peoples accounts from long before you knew me

You wish we'd known each other forever

And sometimes 

In those really early hours of the morning when you can't sleep and feel like the only person in the world 

You dream while you're awake, you let your mind go far

More than you would ever tell anyone 

Things that you would never dare tell anyone, not even me 

But ohhhhh 

You wish you could 

The next spring and summer and autumn and winter all lay at your feet like a Tralfamadorian novel

" No beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love are the depths of the many marvelous moments seen all at once."

It's all as clear as it ever could be 

Laughter, pillow talk, fights, forgiveness, drives, farmers markets, late nights, dive bars, kickbacks, no contact, all day conversations, lust, apocalypses, new days, never-ending light.

Meeting my mother and hoping she’ll like you but I already know it will go bad but you're here to stay and she warms up to you soon 

Ifs, whats, yeses, nos, maybes, thens, nevers, always.

All more and more petrifying yet alluring 

I'm not asking you to love me 

I'm too afraid that it'd scare you off

But I want at least one of these to go through your mind

Because they seem to never leave mine.

Tales from Friction Writing Class

write a character that is unreliable

For as long as I can remember, I have loved Halloween. I don't remember why, but I do. Maybe because it was one of the only nights of the year when my parents wouldn’t fight. Maybe because I was able to dress in as much black fabric and red paint as I wanted without our neighbors pointing out that "Girls shouldn't dress so gloomy." Maybe it was because my favorite photo of my brother was him falling asleep in a stroller with a Kitkat in his mouth. For whatever reason, I always looked forward to October 31st. But after sitting in a holding cell at 2am, covered in fake blood, I have started to rethink all the hype. 

The officer walked in. "Moralez, let's go." I got up and saw that I had left a red stain on the wooden bench where I had just sat. I hoped the officer wouldn't see and add it to the charges. 

He escorted me into a small dark room with a single light hanging from the ceiling. It looked just like the ones in every cop show.

"Alright, let's get started." He sat me down in a cold metal chair. Once he sat, I was able to get a good look at his face for the first time.

"Hey, I know you. Aren't you the hero cop of Maylan County?" He looked taken aback but pleased. "Well, thank you, but that was two years." 

"I know, but still. I followed that story for two whole months. No one could stop talking about it. You got shot in the arm taking down a Meth Lab and saved two kids as well. That is amazing."

The officer started to chuckle. "You really know a lot about that case." He looked down at the papers in front of him, still smiling. "It's kind of my thing. I'm a Journalism Major."

"That's a great field to go into. A lot of opportunities for jobs."

"Thank you, sir."

He looked down again and seemed to remember where we were."So," he started. "What were you doing in the graveyard? "

I tried to make myself look small and innocent. "Pulling a prank, it's Halloween."

"A prank on who?" He backed off a bit.

"Melody Ginmen. She's the one who called you, right?"

"I'm not allowed to reveal that information." He wrote something down. "The witness said that they saw someone devil worshiping. They reported strange lights, smoke, and a dark figure bathing in blood."

"Yeah, Melody started a rumor that I'm a Satanist, so I decided to give her what she wanted."

He was quiet for a moment. "And are you?"

I laughed. "Of course not. That's ridiculous. I made sure that Melody overheard me saying I would go to the graveyard. Then I bought a bunch of stuff on Amazon and made sure that she followed me out there."

He kept writing. "Why would she start this rumor?"

"Cus she hates me. Ever since I stopped going to church with my family five years ago, she and her friends have had it out for me."

"Interesting."

"You've probably heard of her family. They're crazy religious zealots. They don't go to the doctor. They don't watch PG-13 movies. They bully people in town and protest Halloween events."

He finished writing after a minute. "I've heard enough. I'll be right back." He walked out into the hall and started talking to some other officers. After a moment, I heard a voice exclaim “I KNOW WHAT I SAW.”

Within twenty minutes, I was in the back of a squad car, being driven back to my dorm hall. The new officer asked, “So what are you studying?” 

I smiled, “Religious studies.”