Thoughts on my writing...?

[xx_forever_a_dancer_xx]

You walk through the world and you are okay. Wars rage around you and babies cry, but you are okay. Until one day you’re not. One day someone or something takes a dull knife and sticks it in your consciousness and twists it around and around until you can’t help but scream. Then you can’t help but double over and stop walking, and in the split second that you do, you notice things. The sound of your own footsteps is no longer there to drown out the sound of a nuclear bomb or of an infant’s tear, of each of them hitting the ground in unison, one to change the lives of millions forever, one left to be forgotten in the lonely world of passed moments. All of this pain arrives at once and hammers you like a wrecking ball. The sand in the hourglass slowly whispers along, and much more blood is shed before your wounds begin to scab. Each grain falling through the glass marks a fiber of your being reconnecting with another, one by one, building back up from when you were blown to bits, reduced to particles of dust on a forgotten toy under a now-grown child’s bed. After a while, you are whole again. Complete. You are as you were before the pain, except for a scar. A hastily stitched seam on your consciousness, a stain on your soul that won’t come out no matter how much OxiClean you put on it or how many times you run it through the wash. You try to suffocate the last traces of that first scream that remain in the back of your throat with Oreos, try to bribe them with ice cream, but its no use. So you pretend. You get up out of bed and take your second set of first steps, and pretty soon, you’re walking again. No, not walking, limping – you’re fated to pretend. Limping through the world, people pass in and out of your life. You never let anyone get close enough to you so that no one ever notices you limp, and your sleeves are always drawn, covering the welts on your forearms. You are alone and unapproachable. You couldn’t stand someone seeing your scars, couldn’t bear to show any sign of weakness while everyone else stands so tall and strong. Or so it seems. Then one day, the second “one day” in this messed up episode, someone dares to march right up to you and walk by your side. You increase your pace, and so do they, Mustering all your effort, you manage to break into a small jog. You glance over and they are ever by your side. Furious and afraid, you turn on them like a sick dog on its abusive owner. You claw and punch, kick and flail, but they merely grab your arms and force them to your sides. Your eyes lock. One pair are red, glassy, and dark, the other shimmering and expectant. But beneath the glimmering ocean surface of the pupils lie the dark depths of the sea floor. Without knowing what it is you’re doing, your hands go to your sleeves. You push them back, revealing he multitudes of scars imprinted in your flesh like hieroglyphics in an ancient tablet. You slowly look up at them and watch as they turn the insides of their own forearms skyward. Their sleeves are only shoulder-length, clearly displaying their own array of scars, like craters on the moon. And among the scars are wrinkles, drawing themselves across every inch of skin, cracks in a sidewalk. They begin to walk you notice their own limp – faint, but definitely present. They turn and gesture for you to join them. Leaving your sleeves pulled back, you glance behind you one last time. Turning back to them, you limp off together. Off through the world. Off to take the pilots out of their warplanes and off to put the babies in their cribs. All with your sleeves rolled up for all to see.



I wrote this fairly recently for my 8th grade English class and received much praise for it in that environment. Thoughts from you guys?