Storymakers: The Muse

Storymakers: The Muse

By Sheenie
Seventh Grade
The Northwest School
Kirkland, WA

Take a deep breath
look down
fishies
lots of them
they look innocent,
really,
all the way down there
in the warm, warm water.
I Dare You To Jump
said my cousin
lips to my ear.

I steal another look down
the water suddenly looks like
heaven's death
if I imagined it.
The fall would be beautiful.
But when I hit the water
the fishies would not swim innocently anymore
and would eat me up while I was drowning.
I suffocate in pain-lined cocoon of feathers.
Suddenly, I'm alienated
Take a deep breath.

I see me in my yellow star shirt.
Me, the little 8 year old leaning over the railing wondering
Why am I in such a place?
Why do we have to wake up every day and learn about the world?
Why does Monday come after Sunday?
Why do I have a mommy?

I never made sense of it that day.
The only thing that held me back was fear
fear of the fishies eating me away
not even mommy and daddy mattered at the time,
they were just
There.
I loved them of course
but at that time it was just an epiphany of an 8 year old
that, we will never know why we are here and in these skins of ours
coated with flesh and bone
and an ever beating heart beneath our chest.
That day 8 year old me was alienated.
And I discovered the first piece of the puzzle.

Years past.
This time it's a grey day
shadows cast along the empty kitchen table.
I sit alone
and I've wandered into disconnection.

Everyone else is not aware of this change,
but my head just drifted out of my suddenly cold body.
I gazed back at myself,
looking at my pale flesh and wondering again why I'm here.
I don't wonder
I start to want
To know my first kiss
whether it's horrible or not.
I want to fall in love
even if I have some
Deadly
Ending.

I turn my invisible head
and cast away those few
girlish dreams
and wonder tragedy.
Today I wish someone would please, please drown
to stave off the boredom in my brain
That speaks evil, in tongues.
I would love if the horror swept the pool and
I would feast my eyes on that lifeless body
because I'm greedy like that.

Now what am I doing
just sitting in this cushioned chair
waiting for it to happen?
I'm a pathetic girl
Passively waiting
in the kitchen growing darker
And reality waking up from its fruitful sleep
I stand up full in one self
to store my wonders elsewhere


The time itself has flickered onto my shoulders
I am worn
Crinkly
Wrinkled
but somehow my experienced mind still has the power left to
look within and realize.

Like all elders
I peel myself off of my body
and feel young and fresh again.
I stare piteously at my older self
looking in disdain at such a lump
Of a fat woman
sitting in a chair.
Just sitting.
My young fresh self is thinking why did I do nothing in that life?
That old grandmother of myself gave up on her dreams
because he answer was always 'later'
And later became weeks
later became years
until finally later
Molded into a possibility of never.

Being semi-conscious of my own heavy body
I slowly got up
and took a mirror.
Looked in
Dropped it
Shattered it because my young fresh self couldn't bear to look at failure.
It was not right
for that now alienated, I had formed a mind untouched years ago.

Slowly
Surely
I walked back into a fat
Old
Grandmother again.
But even if it took these many
Torturous years,
Disdain has dissolved.
Understanding took its place.
The puzzle was finished.
At least as finished as the little girl inside
could do.

Storymakers: A Creative Challenge for Young Writers, is a program inviting students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades living in Washington State and British Columbia, Canada, to submit their own original creative writing pieces.