for a minute there i lost myself in true blue skies and summer breeze in open hearts and lucid lips I hid inside a shadow's eaves Bright lights are calling closer now don't close your eyes, this is what it means to be, be alive, be free pick up the pace, don't sit out out, start a chant, and no amount of suffering will end the war we don't know who we're fighting for am i sane or have i landed on some desert plane abandoned by all the shared maddened minds of conformity of clarity he who shall prosper, hand of the divine am i at the steering wheel is it a disillusioned feel of control, to which i seek beyond all hope the hiss and fire, a sliding rope center bring the words inside twist like fairies in the night lilac and blue, silver lined a glinting hope, a copper shine of length and flesh and mites of dust a history a fortitude, push forward we must

They didn’t know she had brought it to the funeral. She kept it hidden in her jacket pocket, a coat that itched and smelled too new, that had been purchased specifically for the occasion. As the service went on, she kept reaching for it, reassuring herself it was still there. Of course she knew this was ridiculous. Things didn’t just get up and walk away. But somehow, the idea of losing kept crawling up into her mind, streaming down in a flood of teardrops. “Sorry for your loss”. She’d been hearing it all week. Adults who claimed to know her tried to comfort her as though she was a doll, touching her face and petting her hair. She hadn’t thought about loss much before. At ten, her only experiences were with things. She had not been aware that you could lose people as well, that in such a case it did not matter how carefully you tried to keep track of a person you love, they could still vanish in a poof of thin air at any second. They hadn’t given her much warning. Her mother thought it best to keep her in the dark, shelter her from the reality. But she had to know at some point. “You’re grandma is really sick. She’s probably going to die soon, but she loves you very much.” The girl had been shocked. She hadn’t known what to do at first, so she mimicked her mother’s tears. The news sat on her skin, saturating slowly. The next night she cried alone. They wouldn’t let her visit the hospital. They wanted to give her a beautiful memory, to leave out the broken parts. “Try not to cry on the phone,” her father told her. “Grandma doesn’t want you to be sad,” But she couldn’t help it. Now that she knew, everything was different. “How can I live knowing I’ll never see her again?” Her mother gave her a hug, but what she really wanted was an answer Now at the funeral, everyone was crying. She had never seen so much of it. As she looked around, her own water vision goggles made everyone’s faces shine. Her grandfather was the worst. There he stood; front and center, shoulders shaking like an earth quake. She wanted to go to him, to show them how their faces matched, that she understood what it meant to have that steel ball constantly resting at the top of your breath. But instead she just watched, absorbed the grand words floating from the stage, put in the mouth of someone not part of this tragedy. Her father placed his hand on her grandfather’s shoulder. It didn’t stop the shaking. Her hand drizzled back into her pocket, fingering the string of beads. She didn’t know how many there were but she would have liked to. Maybe that number could have meant something, been a comfort to whisper under her breath. Her grandpa would have liked to know, probably. She held them in her fist, a plastic heart, beating thump thump thump with the life of her own pulse. After the funeral, she wore the necklace every day. It wasn’t a very pretty thing, just a basic string of red plastic beads that dented little circles into the web of her hands. But its plainness was sort of the point. Her mom and her aunts and her sister had gone through the boxes with excitement, looking for shiny treasures. Her grandmother had a lot of valuable things, pearls and diamonds and precious stones that had to be split evenly amongst the relatives. Everyone argued over the things they liked best, entitlement cascading through the voices. The girl asked for nothing, until everyone had taken their pick. The red necklace sat brightly on top of beige velvet, and the girl thought of blood before anything like roses. She picked it up and twisted it over and under her fingers, little vines forming a cat’s cradle. “I want this,” she said. No one had stopped her. For over a year, the string became a part of her, swinging like a noose. “Why don’t you wear one of your nicer pieces of jewelry?” her mother asked. It wasn’t so much the necklace she was concerned about. It was the haunting way her daughter carried it, always reaching for it with a faraway look in her eyes. It wasn’t healthy for a child to be so consumed by the past. But the girl just shook her head. The necklace was lucky. She talked to her grandmother in heaven about it often. “Keep it on and you will always be protected.” The voice in her head told her other things too. It wondered about suicide, about what it meant to live a life worthy of being remembered. The girl didn’t think too many people would cry at her own funeral. Her grandmother had been so friendly and kind and full of life. It was no wonder she deserved all those tears. The girl felt like if she disappeared, most people probably wouldn’t notice. One time, a boy on the school bus decided to comment. “Why do you always wear that stupid necklace? Will your head fall off without it?” All her friends had laughed and she felt a resentment creep up into her heart. “No. It was my grandmother’s. She’s dead now”. A year ago she would have cried. Since she didn’t, the boy left her alone. The more she talked to the voice in her head, the less she wanted to stay in the real world. Her parents were always yelling at her about school and chores and took her little sister’s side whenever they would fight. Her friends were not people she felt any closeness with; other outcasts of 5th grade society. She spent weekends alone in her room, writing poems and crying in the dark. She had the feeling that something had to give, like she was on an edge. Every morning when she woke up, she couldn’t help but consider not getting out of bed. What would happen? If she just lay there, refusing to respond, refusing to even open her eyes, what would happen? Her parents would try to wake her up, of course. Yell for a while. Maybe they would get scared, bring her to a hospital. And she would let this all happen. Let them run all the tests, stick needles in her arms, pull the necklace over her head, dress her all in white. And she would do nothing. She would leave her body sitting motionless and let her mind float out of her head, into the air, trailing along her grandmother’s. “I am so proud of you” she would say. “No more fear, now. Just let it go”. She still remembered the last words her grandmother had said to her. They had been on the phone, that crying conversation, just the day before she died. “I love you so much” she had said and the way she said it, well it felt like a promise. And she knew it was stupid but there was this idea in her head that if she poured the love out of her chest, an entire life time’s worth, and sent it towards her grandmother, then surely that would save her. One day, the necklace broke, just a simple snap of the fragile string left her with two wilted snakes sitting in her hands. She hadn’t been rough with it. She hadn’t yanked or pulled or tugged or wrenched. But there it was, broken, all the same.