The world we live in is a place of dreams, from the squads we roll in, to the clothes we wear, to what we drive and to some extent who we love or let love us. Sometimes the dreams come true, other times they crush so hard and burn, and break us, into pieces. Dreams make us, and break us too. So, we tend to hold on to dreams like broken winged birds. Like our whole lives depend on it, we imagine people in our dreams, imagine success in our dreams, envision our lives in dreams before they become what they really are. Dreams are dangerous, they can make us or break us. My dream to be with the bully had broken me. How would I live after what happened today, how could I call myself a person? I was sitting inside the toilet, on the floor, with the door locked. A group of students who saw me come in were standing outside, reading the lines of my diary loudly. They had been dropped inside the washrooms too. Whoever had done this had do a great job. It was expensive but great, perfect. I a
I was seated quietly ,trembling, not knowing what to do. Was the bully secretly in love with me too? What could be the problem? What could have transpired. He looked confused today, her couldn’t decide whether to be sweet, rude or arrogant the way he was every day. It was unlike Vince to be anything other than rude, violent and abusive. He was a mixture of all three. All three blended at once to produce a very rude bully who didn’t want to see me win or succeed in life. The whole class couldn’t picture what was going on yet? They couldn’t find something to laugh about too. Everyone was looking at us, not at us but at Vince specifically, demanding answers, answers of why he hadn’t done something big yet, answers of why he hadn’t made a big super human move yet. My crimes were great, they were big, I doubted if Jesus himself would have agreed to die for me today, if at all he came back and God asked him to save Fatrez specifically, would he have died for me. Let alone die, would he hav
Sometimes, we are not proud of what we did, other times we are ashamed, of the scars we carry. Each scar resembles pain. Each scar has a story behind it. The fact that wounds healed and scars were left behind reminds us of everything. It reminds us of how short we have fallen. How short we have fallen on everything. How unworthy we have become. Deep down I felt bad, I felt hurt. Nobody liked me, I was sick in the head. Sick everywhere, socially sick, emotionally sick. I wasn’t even angry at anything; I was in pain. The pai n was too much and it felt like my heart had been plastered over. Like a hole had been drilled in my heart and it was bleeding. At this point, I didn’t even want to die, I just wanted the pain to stop. I wanted to stop feeling lost, stop feeling damaged, stop feeling screwed up. Stop feeling unworthy, stop feeling so down in the dumps. It felt like I was in another planet and I was an alien. A radioactive material that people kept trying to get rid of, but wouldn’t
Sometimes it felt like everyone else around me had their whole life figured out. They fitted in easily, moved with masses, they didn’t struggle like I did. They didn’t try so hard, they just fit. Pieces of their puzzle just found each other. They made friends easily, got good grades easily, their parents loved them without drama, their families weren’t dysfunctional either. They were just happy and okay. Happy even though they didn’t deserve it. Happy, so happy that I was jealous. They didn’t have to pretend to be okay, pretend to be human. Pretend that they were okay without friends or lie about being an introvert to cover the lack of friendships. Lie that they lived being a loner or anything like that. Faults are usually thick where love is thin. The faults in my life were thick, too thick for me to break out or see the way forward. It only meant that the love in my life was thin, it was hardly there. I didn’t even love myself and kept looking down on me every day. How could anyone
‘‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’’ We were sitting on the rooftop with Cage, apparently, he had been watching me all along. Watching me come in and take slow guided steps towards the edge, curiously. ‘‘So how did you discover here?’’ he asked shrugging his shoulders. ‘‘I don’t know, I have always known this place exists at the back of my mind,’’ I answered trying to mask my emotions or the fact that I was going through midlife crisis with myself, midlife crisis that I couldn’t solve or deal with. ‘‘Come on, that is not enough, I’m an overthinker and you cannot give me answers that aren’t leading, I’ll just think and think until I get depressed or my head bursts,’’ he joked. ‘‘I love rooftops, I love the sky and the fresh air that only comes along up here on the rooftop, though I have never been here, I have always guessed it is the same as my favorite rooftop and balcony,’’ I smiled. That was half true, at least I tried. I genuinely
‘‘Don’t look at me,’’ I cried.‘‘Why?’’‘‘Because I might cry,’’ I breathed.Nobody had ever done something so romantic and big to me, absolutely no one had ever done that Its okay, that is what gets to happen to you every day when you are in love with a poet.‘‘Can we sit?’’ he requested.I looked at him and smiled as I weighed my options should I sit with him or not.‘‘We will just sit, nothing else,’’ je affirmed.‘‘But why would you want to sit with me, why?’’It was only fair that I asked him the question again. No one ever minded me or looked my way, let alone request to sit with me or even write me nice poems, why would he do that for me.‘‘Because I want to,’’ he answered.‘‘That’s not enough, nobody ever sits with me or wants to have a conversation with me, at all. That’s why I am asking why you want to,’’ I inquired again.I hatred being charity cases, I hated being the object of sympathy.‘‘Because I want to, and because that’s reason enough, to me you are a pure, honest
‘‘Will you come to prom with me?’’ The question caught me off guard and for a moment I stood their perplexed, I didn’t know what to do or how to even do it in the first place. How did people answer just questions? Did they cry first or just say yes straight away without thinking. Was he seriously asking me to go to prom with him? Prom was a big event; it was grand for everyone. You didn’t just show up with anyone at prom, you didn’t just walk into prom night with any cloth that was on top off your wardrobe, it was different. ‘‘Are you seriously asking me to come to prom with you?’’ I asked again refusing to believe it. There were hundreds of girls out there, many people that would say yes to him. Cage wasn’t ugly, any girl would fall in love easily with him. His perfect charms that began with his ease of words and pure vibes, his soft and deep laughter that run deep and finally his intoxicating black eyes. He was a package, that I had to admit, he could easily get a girl like Sasha
The world is in constant motion and those who passed by at one point are going to come back their someday, to complete the journey full circle. That’s what Cage believed in, he believed he was going to see his sister someday. It was called hope, faith. Or like Emily Dickson described it. Hope is the thing without feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all. The kind of hope he had was dangerous. It was the kind that destroyed you and ate you alive inside. I knew how it felt like, it was a hopeless, desperate way to go, one that would always end in misery. I had wanted to tell him that that’s how I used to feel like when my mama went away. Some strong kind hope that she would be back and pick from where she left. Pick the broken pieces and fix them back together. It was positive hope at first, the first few years when I saved money and bought her a dress, she liked and new shoes from a nearby store. Then went ahead to draw many picture