I was in a classroom. It seemed like kindergarten. The class was asked to make cards for somebody. Not sure who, but it didn't matter. I didn't have paper to work with, so I looked around the room. There was a card on the desk -- navy blue with a large red heart lined with lace hot glued on top.

Inside the card, though, led to some disappointment--and intrigue. The card had already been filled with someone else's words. Words of passion, regret, longing. Words not meant to be read by me. And yet, the card's recipient shared my first name.

Was there a mix up? Maybe this card was handed to me because someone thought it was for me:

C---! C---! How I long to see you again! I'm sorry for what happened. I miss you so much. It was all my fault. We will meet again. But first, I have to let you know what happened.

I was invading someone else's world. Perhaps two lovers, who knows? And yet, the card was with me. And I continued reading:

* * *

I had to leave because things weren't safe. If there had been some sort of infection teeming through my body, you are the last person I would be with: no matter how much I want to stand by you, stroke your cheek, or share a smile with you, I could not bear to see you like me. Sick. Weak. Gross.

I joined the military after we parted, perhaps because I was scared. I wanted an excuse to leave you behind. The time me last met, there was something I never told you. That fountain where I last saw your almond eyes and tan skin bears all my secrets.

You left for a minute or two. Or three. Or four. I had forgotten why. In your absence, I felt a paroxysm finely creep through my stomach. A subtle tremor at first, leading me to ignore it. Then almost instantly my body urged my conscience to kneel at the fountain's side and hang over the edge. My insides reverberated uncontrollably, and I began to spit out worms into the water in a continuous cascade. The worms swam in the water after the dive from my tongue; if you were, I could only imagine the mortification in your eyes. The regret exposed on your forehead. The fright tethered to your lips.

So I left you, never to return until I was better. Until I had some answers.

That is why you never saw me leave. That is why I never saw you return.

* * *

The teacher came in to collect our work. "C---, I need your card." She told me.
"I'm not--"
"Please turn it in. You had plenty of time."
Defeated, I handed it in and walked out of the classroom, brimming with questions and regrets. I found myself walking by the routine forest trail I use to go home. A shortcut.

Suddenly, an impulsiveness to stand still paralyzed my body. Whatever finger I tried to move wouldn't even point. Whatever foot I attempted to kick wouldn't even tiptoe. My stomach then lit with a brewing flame within that could not be seen or extinguished.

I tried to run, and I kneeled.
I tried to holler, and I gagged.

Liquid streamed from my mouth onto the dirt path like a creek. I tried to cry and realized that my tears could not even comfort me with moisture--all my fluids were decanting the floor beneath me.

And inch by inch, I felt it crawl out. It grabbed my aged molars, first, then wriggled its way through my esophagus to have a good look at the outside. It grabbed my front teeth and stuck its nose suspiciously toward the floor, attempting to discern its whereabouts and safety. After deciding that everything was clear, I felt both its elbows touch the corners of my lips and its abdomen sliding down the apex of my tongue. Its legs made one firm kick out of my throat onto my bottom molars. Then it swiftly took a plunge onto the dirt and ran off to the trees--absolutely noiseless.

Wrote this on December 27, 2009. Recently unearthed.

1

What is the use of the day and the night? I’ve often wondered about why a sun should need to perturb the sleeper’s eyelids. Perhaps it is among the most despised disturbances in life, waking from a much preferred—or much needed—slumber. Yet waking up also assumes that there is a life you belong to; chores that need to be fulfilled, jobs that need to be worked, people that need to be loved. The same cycle is the concept of life simply going because that is just how it is. I concur with Robert Frost’s draconian opinion about life: “It goes on.”

Conversely, sleep is as much a foe as it is a friend. But who can hate sleep? A patient, perhaps, etherized on a lonely hospital bed with an absent mind and soul; a widowed grandmother alone at home, hiding from old age; or even a youthful boy clinging onto his blanket-shield to evade his fears of a dark bedroom.

I’ve never been a spiritual person. Sometimes, when my story leaks to unctuous others, they talk of incubus and spiritual attacks with perverse conviction. That Satan had been summoning demons to intrude my nightly relapses. I know, in all earnest, that the events that took place were far from the norm. But I can never judge if someone was trying to “tell” me something; a human, a demon, an angel… maybe even my own conscience had something to say.

Yes, who am I to know? A first year college student, at the time, and I had yet to explore the strange world around me. It’s fascinating how after meeting only one person, all the difference had been made in my narrow world. Yet, I was still nauseated from the high school bubble—the social awkwardness and the criticisms for just being. I wanted to be alone, forever. I wanted to believe that life held more meaning—that I had more purpose to breathe the intoxicating fumes of Southern California than to die and have my ashes inhaled by some other living creature.

If anything, the experience only kindles my spirit.

The tech guy.

HE reeked of cigarettes and electronic oil, dripping down invisibly upon his musty hands. Cursing under his breath here and there, he wiped the smudge on his nose and cheeks onto his black drab uniform.

"It's so slow," he groaned at the Intel Inside, boasting of a "Premium-4" status (whatever that means). "This takes forever to load."

I quietly nodded and said, "Yeah." In a sense, I felt like I shouldn't disagree with him.

- - -

*practicing the prose* This is based on one of the men I saw working in the library.

My 2AM two cents at the romance scene

She adored him from far away; the way you do stiffly, subtly and concealed. So inconspicuous, thought she, in order to shirk away from his inquisitive eyes. But his smile, seen from afar that is, was so pleasant and dangerously disarming. It was ridiculous--a criminal's game, enraptured with the safe confines of his jail cell as opposed to the consequences of choosing to face reality. No, thought she, a prisoner should much rather decide to stay indoors and locked up in his own fantasies rather than be vulnerable to even more pain and suffering.

All this from a smile of a ... "somewhat stranger", the word she would use to denote any sort of love interest. For although she was in a mild "trance", of which she hopes IS in fact love, she is unaware of just who that stranger is. Friend, a little likely. But acquaintance is more like it, for there's always a risk. Who is that person you are immediately attracted to? And why? One might deem such nuances as mere trivialities, but not she. Trivialities were easily considered troublesome.

She snuck one more glance, softly, at his eyes then sped away before he could possibly see her at all. And then she sunk against the wall, eyes, mouth, and heart drooping in relief and satisfaction to the floor. She made it in one piece, and she celebrated, and she cried. For once again, she didn't have the nerve to say anything. And she wept.