The stars are very pretty today It's nighttime and the sun went away My eyes awake, my mind at bay My worries slowly drift away I forget about all that is in the past When my problems were so large and vast ‘Cause the sun has gone, no shadows cast I never want the night to pass But the sun will rise along with pain Nighttime glory will no longer reign My problems will shine through again But for now, only peace is in my brain Caroline Gilmore
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Time. Always feels comfortable, And known. Time. Seems like there’s a lot Until there’s none. Time. The clock is always ticking, Awaiting the future. Time. Until one day, It’s the only thing you count on. Time. All of a sudden it’s the only thing You can think about. Time. It holds all the answers To come. Time. You never realize how cruel it could be When the ticking and hand moving Affects You. Time. Lauren Homem
Smothering feeling of unexplained fear; the prospect of saying hello terrorizes the mind. A brick wall drives itself between you and the person in front of you. Thoughts penetrate your mind, thinking of interaction. Speaking with others draws air from your lungs. Paint a happy face. Make a mask for yourself. Fear pulses through the mind, refrain from speaking. Emotions mold and mash into painful numbness. Habits begin to form, flittering of eyes or weaving of fingers. My mind screams to look away when eyes meet. Suffocation encases your entire being Sealing it away from the world in fear Today I’m going to talk, you lied to yourself Unity is never found among us, we would never say anything Stuck up. Just shy. All lies. All false presumptions. An innocent hug or accidental contact A flinch. Tense the muscles. Our mind’s way of Rejection. Accidental rejection. I’m sorry. It has nothing to do with you. I would swear. Please don’t hate me I would beg. Plead. Pray. But I wouldn’t say a word, never. These are the ones that are silent, always. Anonymous
What if? What if it never happened? What if they were still here? What would differ? Would life be happier, would it shine with more light? Or would it remain the same? A darkness, An ever-growing darkness, with no escape? I have never felt such pain in my life, Compared to that weekend in February. Something that started as a fun weekend, One meant to celebrate a special day, Turned into one of fear, pain, and sadness. The downward spiral started Saturday, The storm started with a singular call. The first clap of thunder broke that evening, Another call to start the distress. We sat in a suffocating silence, Unable to stop thinking of what might be. A restless night led to an eerie dawn, We started the trek home, waiting on edge. That is when the floodgates to Hell opened. A time I shall never forget in my life, Nine-fifteen, that’s when the final call came. On the other end, the uncontrolled sobs Of a mother grieving a tragic loss. In that moment, everything stopped. In that moment, I felt a knife in my chest. In that moment, I couldn’t seem to breathe. The tears came cascading down on my face, Soaking my sweater sleeves as I wiped them, Trying in vain to slow the waterfalls. I turned to my sister, seeking comfort, But a devastating sight beheld me. She curled into the corner of the car, Huddling her body to the window, Like a cat seeking the sun for its warmth, Yet the sun was not present, nor warm. A cold, dead silence filled the stopped car. Why did it have to happen? Why to them? Would I be happier if it never happened? Or would I take what I had for granted? Is there a single way to stop the pain? People always tell me, that time heals all wounds, It’s been three years, yet the pain is still fresh Why won’t it go away? Anonymous
“Stand still and smile while I try to get his attention!” Click. “Got it.” One quick snapshot of the man he used to be. One quick smile, gone as fast as it had arrived. One quick tap of the finger on the phone screen to capture one of the last moments he would ever be like that. All the pictures of a man and his family, no big deal, but if you look closely, you can see the emptiness in his eyes and the blank stare he gives the camera. “Ron!” A glance. A look. A smile. One quick snap, a picture, And then it was gone. But trapped in that moment, something was there. Forever ingrained in that one picture, a quick window into the man he used to be. It had been months since I’d laid eyes on Pop. We had arrived in Colorado because we weren't sure how long he would have. In the past few months, his health had taken a drastic turn for the worse. He had lost weight, started to have even more trouble walking, and no matter how much my Grandma tried to deny it, he wasn't really able to recognize her anymore. The final straw that brought us out to Colorado was the fact that he was starting to have trouble swallowing. Trouble swallowing was one of the final stages of alzheimers and dementia. My Grandma drove with us to the group home he was staying at. It was a small house with yellow stucco and a fenced-in yard. There was an electronic lock on the front door from the inside so that no one who lived there could escape. Most of the residents had some sort of memory problems, like Dementia or Alzheimers. We walked in and sat down on the couch; there were a lot of people in the room. The TV was always on, playing Thanksgiving or Christmas movie reruns on the Hallmark Channel. One of the ladies working there noticed us and went to grab my grandfather from his room. When they brought him out, I was in shock. He had lost probably 50 pounds and was just skin and bones. He could only move by shuffling his feet along the ground. Sensing a presence, he turned and he stared in our direction, but with no signs that he knew who we were. After they sat him down, we walked over and said, “Hi”. My grandma leaned in to hug him, then my dad, and my mom. I didn't want to hug him. I didn't want to acknowledge that I knew the man that was sitting there, frail and vulnerable. My mom leaned down and whispered, “I know you don't want to, but you have to, for Grammy.” I crept over and said, “Hi Pop!” in as cheerful a voice I could manage. Nothing. I leaned in to hug him and felt his hands wrap around me, his long sleeve cotton shirt rubbing on my back. It was loose and weak, but still something. I smiled. We all stepped back and sat down. He was looking in our direction when I noticed his eyes blankly staring around the room. His eyes were just there; no one behind them. Staring into his eyes as he looked in our direction was something I had never really paid attention to before that moment. They were just blue orbs in a skull, no spark of life like I could see in everyone else in the room. It was torture. I had never stared into someone's eyes and not seen the thing that makes them feel alive. The little glint in their eyes that showed what they were thinking, or the lines near their eyes from smiling. I wanted to wake up in my bed at home, or pretend that we were just visiting him. I wanted to wake up and see my real grandpa, the one that I was excited to see, not afraid to look at in case he might have gotten worse while I had glanced away. The grandpa that I made pies with every Thanksgiving when I was little. The grandpa who picked me up and twirled me around. That grandpa was waiting at home with the huge box of 20 different types of cookies he made every year for Christmas. We hung out for a while and then my grandma decided to bring him out to lunch. My family glanced at each other in dread. We knew that it was going to be mortifying to bring him out to eat because he couldn't feed himself and knew a lifetime would pass before he would enter or exit the car. My dad had tried in the past to try and persuade my grandma to stop taking him out to lunches and little trips because although it was fun for her, we didn't think he even knew what was happening, and it took him days just to get back into the swing of things and comfortable with the life in the house he was living in. It took him about 15-20 minutes to shuffle out of the house. Once at the car, they turned him around to place his back towards the entrance of the car. Then they slowly lowered him down into the car to make sure that he wouldn't fall out. Once he was secure, they put his feet in and buckled him in. My family got into another car and drove off to the restaurant. Once we had arrived at the restaurant, we got his wheelchair out of the car, and the whole ordeal started again. After finally getting out of the car, we slowly crept into the restaurant following my dad pushing the wheelchair. It was a weekday and still pretty early, so there weren't a lot of people in there, but still a good amount. He was placed at the head of the table with my grandma next to him. I sat as far away from him as I could, afraid of not seeing the man I had once known. When the food finally arrived, it sank into the whole table that he couldn't feed himself. It was going to be a long lunch. We all started eating and my grandma started to take turns feeding him and herself. The food sometimes would fall out of his mouth and onto his beard or his face. It was disgusting and I could tell we were getting some stares. The eyes of the people in the restaurant were drilling into our backs. I was in the bathroom more than I was out in the main restaurant that lunch. Before we left for the day to return him back to the house, my mom wanted to take a picture. We all stood around him. Me, my brother, my Dad and my Grandma. My mom tried to get his attention so many times, but he just wouldn't look in her direction. “Just look at me and smile!” she whispered to us, smiling the whole time. She was determined to take a good picture of him because deep down she knew that if she didn't get a picture this time, we might not be able to get one the next time we visited. So we looked straight ahead at the camera and smiled the whole time, while she was yelling, “Ron! Look over here!” and waving at him to get his attention. She didn't delete any of them because she didn't know if there would be one better than the rest. I think she ended with something like 40 pictures she deleted because he wasn't looking or we didn't look good. Finally, a quick head turn. A quick recognition of his name. A slight flash of light behind those orbs in his head. A smile. A finger pressing a button. And just like that, gone. Whatever flash of life that had once been there was no longer, but in that one picture, there was a tiny speck of a smile, a tiny little light that made him seem, even slightly, a little more like the man we had all once known. The man we were hoping to see the whole time. Lauren Davidson
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