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Her head hurt terribly and her eyes burned each time her lids would close. Alex stood staring at the elevator, willing herself to push the illuminated "up" button. As she stood in front of the elevator doors, her eyes became so fixated on the design that it began to jump out at her. An old man scooted up next to her, his walker leading the way. He was dressed in a tweed jacket with matching pants and a wide-brimmed hat. He appeared to be older than Methuselah, but his clothes spoke higher volumes than the wrinkles on his face. He was dressed for a day out on the town, as though maybe this was the only event occupying his day, a visit to the doctor's office. Alex imagined that he had set his clothes out the day before, taking great care to notice any wrinkles or loose threads. His wrinkled hands slowly rubbed over each pant leg feeling a small hole in the seam, wondering how his wife had mended such a minor imperfection. The entire outfit hung neatly in front of his closet so that he would not become confused the next morning if he had to search through his closet. Make things simple.
She smiled limply at him as they both shuffled onto the elevator. He gave her a pitiful glance. Alex realized that she did look pitiful. She was dressed in an oversized college sweatshirt and pajama bottoms, both worn three days in a row. She had been too sick to care what she looked like as she made the journey to the doctor's office.
The elevator arrived at her floor, and she walked off, her head buzzing with the music playing inside. The hall smelled of antiseptic, clean yet very cold. Alex walked up to the office door, the bronze placard reading Dr. Jerry Espinosa, M.D. Alex had never been to this doctor; in fact, she had not seen a doctor in the three years that she had been in college. Alex had not had the flu since she was a child and she kept telling her mother in a very dramatic tone that death was imminent if she did not start improving. After suffering for two weeks with the flu, she had conceded to her mother that she needed to see a doctor. Her mother had made the appointment.
It wasn't that Alex hated doctors, but she did hate waiting rooms. She never knew what to do when she walked in and felt several pairs of eyes staring at her. And one never looked her best when seeing the doctor. The silence in the room always made her feel ill at ease, as though someone's death had just been announced. As she opened the door, Alex noticed the waiting room was empty, and she felt a sense of calm knowing relief was soon to be had.
As she walked towards the receptionist's desk, she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror hanging on the wall. Her blond hair was giving way to chocolate brown roots. She saw her black-rimmed glasses sliding down her nose, and she shuddered at the naked eyes hiding behind them. They looked naked without her blue-colored corrective lenses. Although her face appeared tired and grimy, it was her own lack of self that was most startling. Most days she hid behind her colored hair and colored eyes.
She had spent so many years as a child having to explain who she was. Her light complexion said one thing, but her dark eyes and frizzy hair said another. The children at school would ask are you black? Are you white? She hated those questions; she didn't understand why it mattered. But in school every little detail about oneself mattered. If she said “white,” then the girls named Tiffany or Amber would play with her, and she could play with them in their clean houses and swim in their shiny pools. If she said “black,” then girls named Monique and Shaneesha would play with her, and they would play jump rope barefoot in the street outside their houses, and swim in the crowded public pool. Alex was always trying to prove herself to someone-she never understood why she had to choose- but in the politics of a playground you do. She would ask her mother, "Am I black or white, Mom?"
"You are whoever you want to be Alex," her mother would always reply seriously.
Race was never discussed in their household. Alex's mother was white, but her father was black. One day she had heard her parents angrily whispering in their bedroom and she had pressed her ear to their door hoping to hear what they were saying.
"You sure have raised her to be a white girl,” she heard her Father whisper.
"It doesn't matter, as long as she is happy with the person she is," her mother replied without emotion.
"It will matter someday, but by then it will be too late," said her Father.
At the time Alex did not understand what her father meant by that statement, but the next day he moved out. Six months later he had found a new family. They were black. That was the first time Alex knew that race did matter. She concluded it mattered so much that her father had started over with a whole new family in order to be happy.
That year Alex turned 15, and she made the decision to stop being pulled back and forth. Her once frizzy curls became straight and shiny. Her chocolate brown hair was bleached blonde. Her seemingly black eyes became blue behind her contacts. Her mother looked at her and said, "As long as you are happy."
Alex didn’t care about being happy; she just didn't want to fight any longer. She no longer went swimming fearing her hair would curl up. And she no longer talked to the girls she had played jump rope with. Their glaring eyes would follow her down the hall, whispering between each other.
She saw little of her father, and when she did see him the color of his skin began to repulse her. His children would run up to her screaming, "Sister, sister.” But she would look at them and see only their skin, thinking that he must love them more since they had what she would never have. She looked at their unruly hair and bare feet and felt disgust. And she hated them as much as she imagined he must hate her. When she left home for college, she was never asked questions; to those she met she was exactly who she told them she was.
Staring back at her in the doctor's office Alex saw someone she had left behind long ago, and she was glad that only a few people would see her like this. Walking towards the receptionist, Alex smiled and read the placard on her desk, Adele. Adele was donned in white scrubs, the shirt covered in Flintstones characters. She appeared to be in her late sixties. She was black, her skin matching the color of Alex's hair. She wore reading glasses at the tip of her nose as she looked on the computer and asked, "Are you Alex Johnson?"
"Yes, maa'm."
"You must have the flu, honey," Adele's eyes scanned her pathetic appearance.
"How did you know?"
"Honey, it shows all over your face."
"Well, this is my first time seeing a doctor, since moving here, so I had to be pretty sick before my mother could convince me to come in."
"Since this is your first time seeing the doctor I need you to fill out some forms."
Adele handed Alex a clipboard filled with insurance paperwork. She sat down and felt herself go into autopilot as she answered the questions on each form.
Age: 22
Gender: female
Weight: 145
Race: Caucasian
Her pen then came across the usual questions regarding family history. Beside "mother" she filled out her mother's information. Then beside "father" she wrote N/A. She no longer used his name when filling out paperwork, when asked any questions about him she always declined to share any information. Alex finished filling out the forms and returned them to Adele, standing by her as she reviewed the papers.
She ran a manicured nail under each line as she verified everything had been filled out correctly. Then her pink nail stopped as she looked up at Alex staring at her for no longer than a second.
"You are black," she stated with venom in her voice.
"Excuse me?" Alex replied completely caught off guard, her stomach starting to knot as it had when she was in elementary school. "I said you are black. Why did you put Caucasian?" "Because I am Caucasian," Alex looked at Adele, seeing her father in her dark eyes. "Your form says that, but your nappy head says something else." "Not that it is any of your business, but I am mixed. And since the form said to check one box that is what I did." "It still don't change the fact that you are black and lying." Alex felt speechless. She looked back at Adele, and they just stared at each other for no longer than a few seconds, but what seemed like much longer. As Adele stared at her Alex saw the accusation in her face, as though Adele thought Alex was intending to blow up the building. "I am always wondering why you girls today need to hide behind a white name and silly white words." "I am done talking about this. I have been done talking about this for so long that it isn't even funny," Alex walked back to the chair in the waiting room. She stared at the chair next to her and felt Adele still watching her. The doctor walked into the waiting room a few minutes later, smiling at her. After spending only a few minutes with her, the doctor gave Alex a prescription to help her sleep while her body fought off her flu virus. As she walked out of the room past Adele's turned back, Alex kept telling herself that it was the virus inside of her, but she couldn't stop the wetness streaming down her face as she walked out of the office and into the brightness of the day. When she arrived back at her dorm room, she called her mother to tell her how the visit went. Just as her mother was hanging up, Alex asked her, "Mom, am I black or white?" Knowing her mother's usual response, Alex was startled when her mother said very seriously, "Alex, you are both. And there is nothing you can do to change that." "But I don't know how to be that person." "That is because you never tried to be. You always thought you could only be one or the other. And that is my fault for not telling you differently. I just wanted you to be happy, and not worry about the superficial part of yourself." "But it isn't superficial-it is who I am." "I understand that now, but by the time I realized it you had made the decision for yourself." "I don't know why I care. I know it is just because I have been sick for so long that I feel this way. I’m not usually emotional like this." After she hung up Alex drifted off to sleep. She woke the next day feeling her own self coming back. Her roommate, Kelly, walked into the room and said, “I am glad you are finally feeling better. And now that you are starting to feel like yourself again don’t you think you should start looking like yourself.” Alex looked in the bathroom mirror and saw her curly hair three times its normal size, brown roots sticking out. Alex glanced at Kelly, her own blond hair perfectly coiffed in a ponytail. “You’re right; I do need to start looking like myself again. I’m going to run to the drugstore and pick up some hair dye.” When Alex returned to her room Kelly was waiting. They walked into the bathroom and Kelly began mixing the dye in a plastic bowl. She saw the color turning a dark shade of brown and she gasped. “Alex this is brown, what are you doing.” “I want to see my natural color again. It has been so long since I have seen myself in this color.” Unsure, Kelly looked at her in the bathroom mirror and said, “Are you sure Alex, this seems so drastic. Your hair is your shining glory.” “Yes,” replied Alex matter-of-factly. As Kelly began to massage the hair dye into her scalp, Alex watched in the mirror and suddenly felt scared as memories began to flood through her head. After they were finished Alex looked in the mirror seeing that her chocolate roots had taken over her entire head. She looked at Kelly and said with a smile, “My natural color is my shining glory.” She went downstairs walking towards the park and for the first time in a very long time she felt cold pavement on the soles of her feet. She walked into the park, her toes curling around wet shoots of grass. And for some reason unbeknownst to her, her body felt a little lighter.

some more writing prompts

She found the dusty typewriter in the attic on a rainy day. Her grandfather recently returned to the soil. She had wanted to wrap herself in his essence the very core that made him so special. And so she had walked the short steps leading from his bedroom to the attic. It was a place always forbidden to her in her childhood, a place seeming so magical to the eyes of a little girl. She would sit in her tree house, spying at him through green binoculars found in the cereal box. He had worked so endlessly on that typewriter. Caressing each key as though it were a woman he met in a brothel. She had always hated that typewriter. Knowing that his loyalty always came first to the shiny grey metal. The letters on the keys were indiscernible, since he knew them by touch, as the crevice of a woman’s neck that he had kissed each morning. Beside it she saw the yellow filing cabinet, hiding the stories of a man alone, a man trapped in a marriage of monotony. Carbon paper copies filled a basket beside the desk, as though their child had blossomed from a love affair unknown to the outside world. She pushed her fingers onto her temples, trying to listen for his voice, a soft melody.
She fell against a blackened chest, a broken lock on the front. She remembered the morning his grandmother had crushed the lock, screaming obscenities and wondered secrets. He cried into her apron pleading for a blind eye. She had reached in the chest removing yellowed envelopes smelling sweet. Each one with a broken seal and darkened fingerprints. As her eyes scanned the parchment, legs would buckle and he would beg forgiveness. After reading for hours in the same position, she closed the chest. Straightened her apron and walked down the steps. Back to the kitchen she had traveled, feeding little mouths and humming softly a song from the old country. He had crouched in the corner weeping softly.
That was the day she understood her grandfather was human. Only man. Sinful. She did not understand the significance until she became a woman and wrote her letters, in sweet smelling envelopes, fingerprints staining the outside. He was only a man.

More writing prompts

Paperclips, lunch box, principal, swing, girl with a pink ribbon

She tossed the paperclips between her fingers. The cold medal leaving a cool imprint on her finger. He smiled at her from a distance, and she remembered the yearning felt in yesteryears. Small fingers draped around her arm, the feeling of completeness, the memories of a child. Her mother always whispered in her ear, “You are the stars in my heaven.” Smiling, always smiling at a man she loved the next day. The next day…and the next. He was always charming, calling her name and coming home in plaid pants with a cigar rolled into the pocket. She would fix them vodka sodas and her mother would request a mineral water, which meant vodka tall. They would always wink at her before grabbing her mother’s behind. As though they shared in some secret joke, a secret no one else dared to understand. And then they would walk away….away she would pull at her necklace, the one her mother had gotten for her on Mardi Gras. That night her mother had filled the house with music, African drums. She had smiled in a corner, as her mother swayed back and forth to the music. Her hips finding the rhythm and then letting go. Into the masses she had been pulled. The streets lit with Mardi Gras partygoers, chanting in the square, her mother kissed her cheek and bid her good night. She felt the tears encountering the peaks and valleys of her face. “You are the stars in the heaven my little one, never forget your worth.”
And with that she had disappeared into the night, blowing kisses, promising memories. She walked to school alone that day, waiting at the bus stop with a pink lunch box, empty. Her mother had woken that morning and made her a sandwich with marshmallows and hot sauce packets. She had smiled and said thank you.
“You are the stars in my heaven,” her mother whispered, falling back into the cloud of smoke permeating from the bedroom walls. Male laughter reverberated onto the couch and vibrated through her chest. She walked through the halls of the school, pink lunch box held tightly against her chest. Little pink ribbon tied neatly on her head, small circles formed in knot. It wasn’t until lunchtime that she realized she was being stared at.
Her pink ribbon seemed to melt onto her head falling in shattered pieces along her shoulder. Her empty lunch box brightly shining in her face, leaving a pink glow on her forehead.
The principal called her into the office. Smiling the smiles of a stranger’s pity, “We have some news for you” she whispered to her nodding toward the man in the grey suit. “You will be spending some time with a new family. How would you like that?”
She looked at the ground imagining a field of roses and a little girl on a swing. “I would love that,” she replied holding the roses in her fingers.
The stars of the heaven.
And a little more.

New stuff

I am using a website with writing prompting. And the result is turning out to be very interesting. I am writing these without any thought to grammar, structure, redunancy. I am writing whatever comes into my head, which is a very big challenge for me. Each piece has the prompt in italics.


I thought I saw you walking under the shaded trees along the sidewalk in front of my bedroom windows. You held a mask and flashlight. I wondered where you were looking but then you looked up at the street light and smiled. Within a flash you disappeared. I cried. But only for a moment because I knew you weren’t real, only an apparition of my imagination. Hoping for the woman that I used to know. The heartbreak of a lover, but the anger of a friend scorned, in someone else’s imagination I thought I saw you….but then I knew it was nothing more than your essence pulled from my own anger, from my hateful thoughts and livid memories. I hate you she thought, nothing more than pure unadulterated hatred. Yet, my face always discovers a smile when remembering your arms, your laughter, your adoration.

My old room was lost on a winter day. The moving truck pulled up and sucked the insides clean out. Red walls formed on a cold summer day in my mind. Whispered prose across the phone line. Dreams interpreted as we painted our toenails. Barbies hidden under the bed, refusing to let go to a childhood recently lost. I think we will meet once again in a new room walls closing in on the surface. Will we recognize each other or simply touch the walls and laugh?

Hypocrite, cookie jar, city, telephone
The telephone rang slowly that morning, ringing softly in my mind, not enough to awaken my slumber. You rolled over me grabbing it from the bureau. “No!” I screamed…it’s Saturday. You smiled and patted my head like a dog needing to be appeased from the loss of a bone. Few words were spoken, your head nodding slightly…silence. I grabbed my expanding belly praying silently and focusing on the dots on the ceiling…one, two, three. “No,” I whispered into the feather pillow. “Yes,” you responded simply. Your naked body emerged from the shower suddenly grasping at my lust, holding fast to my insecurities, my weakened flesh. The white shirt, freshly starched, wrapped around your reddened flesh. A tie pulled under the collar and a black jacket completing the package. Your briefcase made a slight snap, and papers were rustled under the ceiling fan. Snap. Snap. “Goodbye.” You disappeared. The city calling you forward. My body useful for a moment in time.
“Hypocrite!” I yelled at the shut door. “You hate them and yet you run to do their bidding. You whispered words of love but have never understood them!” My tears began to flood my face causing me to suffocate and cough spit onto the bed.
Hands circling my waist, my legs pushed forward and I emerged from soiled sheets. Bare feet snapped on the wood floor and I grabbed a marker from the cookie jar. Standing in front of the white wall in your office I wrote words of hate, words of regret, words of a bitter woman.
Hours later you called. “My love,” you answered.
“Yes,” I responded in a child’s voice.
“Dinner at six?”
“Of course.”
I walked to the sink, removing a sponge.
Crouched down, the carpet burned my knees.
I began to clean the wall.
Watching colors disappear.

drowning


wishing for a haven of silence,
but wishing is futile since you never really mean it.
is she strange?
is she the one standing outside looking in?
walk to the left,
pull in a little closer.
you have become ostracized…
ostracized
their independence is terrifying.
it makes you squeamish,
it makes you a little nauseous…
conform
it’s so simple and yet she refuses
normalcy is a word that sounds akin to violence.
unnatural,
and yet everyone slips a little sometimes.
we all slip sometimes…right?
you look at her with fear emanating from your eyes.
the bravado is pointless,
when we are all trying to survive,

who is really surviving?

you smile along with the group.
do you love them---have they become your shelter?
the protection you wear around your chest.
protecting a heart,
you never took the time to develop.
will you wear their admiration around your waist,
like a suede belt that has become fashionable.
should you discard their affection
when the season has run its course

wait

do you hear the tears of a culture lost
in the sea of vanity?
in the mirrored pools of your own narcissism
you drown…

Miracles in Daylight Hours

The gun pulls in the shadows,
my heart keeps beating,
just a little too fast.
Blood flowing as it always does.
Don’t look up!
Please look down.
God, oh God.
Wet grass making a puzzle on my face
as I whisper, “Don’t kill him
kill me.” Bullet grazing my cheek,
hot oil making an imprint left forever.
Waiting in silence, whispering incantations,
silence.

broadway is dark tonight

missing my jeep.............

Chocolate Eyes

I remember your eyes.
The stories they told,
the shadows behind them.
Black pupils,
dark chocolate surrounding.
Red lines creeping along a black background.
Never stopping to close them.
You were afraid of missing the moment.
“The moment of what?” I would ask.
“You know. The moment,” you replied.
Those smiling eyes of yours.
They saw more than you ever told.
A couple of Nazis,
a president shot,
hippies screaming, “bloody murder!”
They never cried those chocolate eyes.
“Eyes are for seeing” you told me.
“Can’t waste them by washing the moment away.”
You never lost that moment,
the raging sea of moments.

Days passing, months gone,
your scent no longer near,
the indescribable scent of only you.
My heart will never heal.
Yet you keep walking higher,
higher,
the clouds are surrounding you.
I stand captured in a single moment,
licking the salt off of my wounds.
My blood rushing out, splattered
on a deck of cards. Easing a crimson stream
along the cold tile.
Your scent no longer near.