Unwillingly Yours

You emerged from the depths,

Entangled in invisible infestations,

Labeled for my mind and for my heart,

Respectively.

The incredulity of your pretense
Enchanted and inhibited my nerves,

Dulling my process of thought,
As your feet dragged wells

through the sand
toward me.

My pulse reached for you
Only to beg my
Sorry sympathetic soul
To feel and find sugar
In the salty sand.

My foolish tendancies thrive
d
On what little you fed them.

You spent too much time
Far too close,
Your individual scent 
Mingled, unsolicited,
With my own,

You traced cold fingers
Down my one cheek
Freezing me into
A helpless stillness,
Your greetings
Always abrupt 
And disconcerting.
Always seeping with some
I don’t know what.

My skin prickles

From the touch of a perfumed,

Lovely, sure,
But artificial, hand.

Flights of nervous fright

Fill my head like some sick symphony,

Fast and running,

Staccato and Stubborn,
Reaching and Seeping,
Spreading, Defeating;
Encompassing my mind-
Lightheaded but breathing
Making it impossible,

Illogical even,

To think.
My cheeks and my brain
Flushed frantic 
And pink. 

You've transfered me your nerves
You said,
"What's mine is yours,"
Your unforgiving presence 
Eating away what is left
Of the evening.

As I stood unmoved,
Like Ice,
So solid and steady
You screamed at me
Please
To be moved.

Unprepared and distraught,
I found discomfort in the closeness,

Discomfort in the comfort

You tried so desperately
To impose.

We were too distant from the world,

As my knees rattled,

And I formed my first real opinion

Of this life.
But I could not take into account
How jaded,
And distressing and corrupt,
Your influence would be.
I could not see that your
Oppression was not endurable
In the name of empathy,

I wrote the assertion,
And end-all
Be-all
Of those self-impowering
Opinions.
As you undoubtedly

Reformed your opinion

Of me.

Living passively
Was my deepest
And most relentless
Hamartia.

How could I predict
the kind of pain

You could inflict 
In word and deed,
In the simple name of your 
Tenacious and self-indulgent 
Love


How long will that pain
Follow me,
Encumbering the blazing spirit
Of which I like
To feign possession?

I liked to think no longer.

I liked to think the pain
If so constant,
Could feel small
In the face
Of moral integrity.

How childish of me.

How naive. 

An empty head
Could never 
keep me
From the gaping hole

In my chest. 
Filled only with the emptiness
Of empty words
Of empty "I love you"s

The nervous song still sings,

Slowly numbing 

My agitated thought,


I find myself

Woken shaking
Drenched in
Oceanic goose-bumps
My own hair plastered
To my cheeks

I found myself
Woken wounded
In your arms,

By my own immaturity.

But today, they reject me.

You reject my weakness
And detest my doubt.

You debase me
For allowing you to 
Shake
Myself out of me

You debase
An empty shell.

In your anger,
In your fear,
You lowered me

Into a vat

Of bubbling, black

Ignorance.

I've tried
To revel in it,
To embrace the
Ever-penetrating
Velvet dark in front
Of eyes wide open.

I overlook,
Inscribe and forget.
Encompassed
In your arms,
I lose.

You steal me
and I forget myself.

2012

Elaska's Great Perhaps

If I wrote a book about my life to date, I would title it My Great Perhaps. An allusion to my favorite Coming-of-Age novel, Looking for Alaska, this title references the “Great Perhaps” which lies in the possibilities provided through every new experience. Essentially, The Great Perhaps is that wonderful thing that might be, if only one finds the courage to take a chance.

At every instance following my discovery of the idea, I have relentlessly sought my own Great Perhaps. I filled my days with exertive participation in life, and in it I have found such profundity. I’ve found such passion and insight in seeking opportunities through which I can experience and understand the rare and miraculous moments that pervade human existence. Basically, I have recently spent my free time feeling alive, and it has been the most rewarding pursuit of my young life.

My life story contains suffering, as does everyone else’s, but I know with certainty that such events do not make me a sad story. Rather, my story is a quest. I seek passion, meaning, understanding, and experience. Above all, I go to seek my Great Perhaps.

2012

I wonder why

Every day of my life

Is not spent

Sitting and

Staring

At you.

Will you speak

So freely

And feel your

Heart pound

Like a child’s

As he runs and jumps

Through his field

Of careless dandelions?

And tries to catch

The setting sun?

Cradle it

Within

Open Arms?

When he first 

Discovers

That elusive experience

Of being

Open and true

And alive?

Will you let me in?

Will you let me feel

That heartbeat

Through the pulse

Racing down into

Your fingers

As you relate

Every feeling that

For so long

Caused you such

Intense fear?

Some days

We may walk

And talk

Rather than sit

And stare;

To me,

All that matters

Is that you

Are here.

To me,

All that matters

Is that you feel

Careless

As the dandelion field,

Noble

As the sun.

All that matters

To me

Is that you feel

Alive

Like the young boy

And open,

Like his arms.

2012

Home

You’re still traipsing up the stairs,

Still giggling in my kitchen,
Your lips still linger in the doorway,
As your blush continues
To color my heart.

They’d have never called us loves
But they’d probably call us fools

To leave a hopeless home behind

In hopes of building one anew,

I doubt I could have lived
With your last burning impression
A stolid, stifled glance,
I could not endure a world
After your short-lived adoration,

How is it that your love could
Make me feel more
Like me?

How is it that your love could
Make me feel more
Than me?

Fate be fickle.

Fate ain’t kind.

Fate doth tickle

Down your spine.

"Home is underrated,"
I’d say before I knew,

Before I knew the feeling


Of being home

With you.

"I was here, this is what I thought, this is what I perceived. This is my signature, this is my name."

Every book ever printed has one thing in common: it is the product of a mind that could only fabricate such a work after having lived the author’s particular life. This is not to say that all authors write about personal experience, but suffice it to say that each book is influenced by its author, and each author, by personal experience.

An author is like a father, settling his son upon bended knee, saying, “This is the world as I know and understand it, and this is how it has made me the man I am today, this is what it has taught me. Now, allow me to share it with you.”

Essentially, a narrative is a transcendent voice. The experiences that shape any writer, although often disguised through the voices of fictitious characters, are revealed through literature, and in recording the deepest impressions of human consciousness, books become indelible photographs, capturing a moment, a person: an individualistic voice. Essentially, books are photographs that, miraculously, never fade.

Every book ever printed in the English language has one thing in common: it is comprised of infinitely differing combinations of the same 26 letters. I have found, through exploring and experimenting with those letters, that there is so much to uncover about the world, and ultimately, that no one will experience it quite like I do. No two experiences or exposures are the same, and in that I have found the imperativeness of pursuing my creative voice.

Ultimately, not only is it my passion, but also my responsibility, to say, “I was here, this is what I thought, this is what I perceived. This is my signature, Ellie Mitchell is my name.”

2012

"True Joy, believe me, is a serious thing."

Joy is seemingly superfluous. Scientifically speaking, one can live without it; it is not a necessity of survival as is breathing, eating, or sheltering oneself. Rather, joy is that natural way in which we learn to shelter ourselves from the storm of suffering.

Joy is that intensely indescribable light, buried in some integral but decentralized part of the body, which makes one feel most alive.

This summer, I sought the true significance of pure, irreproducible joy. I searched for meaning at every opportunity, and I discovered passion, consolation, and unadulterated bliss. This summer, I spent my free time feeling alive, and it has been the most rewarding pursuit of my young life.

In August, I spent a full night lying on the shores of Catalina Island, watching the marvelously incandescent stars scuttle slowly across a deep navy sky. I spoke softly to a friend, exchanging experiences and philosophical ideas that I’d thought I may never utter aloud, discovering that I had only withheld them because they deserved the reverence of such a moment. I watched the moon poke itself up over the water, its bright reflection mirrored in a conversely dark ocean, and migrate through the galaxy above me. Finally, the chilling night became a warm morning, and I watched that moon replaced by the sun, as it rose over the horizon. I received a slight sunburn on my cheek after falling asleep in the earliest hours of summer heat, a mark of more than my simple existence, a mark of my having lived, and breathed, and reveled in the splendor of that sun.

This year, I’ve found majesty in places I previously found triviality. This year, I’ve learned that I love intense games of scrabble and winter sweaters and yoga, but that I do not like Pad Thai. Contrarily, I too have learned that I love introspective thought, and I love summer tank tops, and I love the soreness in my legs when I’ve neglected to stretch after a long run.

This year, I filled my life with exertive participation in life, and in it I have found such profundity. I’ve found joy in seeking opportunities through which I can experience and understand the rare and miraculous moments that pervade existence.

Ultimately, I’ve found that joy is more than just a nice feeling; the ability to pursue true joy is an invaluable gift.

2012

My Older Sisters

My mother always told me,

“You are so stupidly sensitive,”

So silly-

My stupid

Crybaby,

Baby girl.

Sit up.

Don’t cry.

Napkin on your lap.

Baby-

Nose in the air.

Lest you become aware

Of that which is below you

By birth.

Lest you let

Poison

Permeate your lungs.

Sometimes when I am alone,

I sit and I cry,
I slouch and I weep-

Dangling dirty boots,

I know I don’t look so pretty

Nor refined,

Like mother likes,

And even when I am alone,

I feel her pressing disapproval.

I am ashamed of my

Emotive face.

And according to mother,

Shameful’s how it should be.

I number each tear

As they fall into my lap,

Over such stupidly silly things,

The first is over a year passing,

Over a change from single-digit age

To a daunting double-

As I have three sisters
And I have seen them all become

Women.

The second is for my oldest sister,

The one whom I’ve heard screaming.

Long after dark, when she comes home

With sullen, haunting eyes,

She’ll press me harshly to her chest,

And whisper me mistakes-

Her burning cheek pressed to my roots,

I stare at bruises up her thighs

With feeble voice and jagged breath,

“Be smart, baby. Be wise,”

Through her shaking, trembling, convulsing,
I feel not one single hot tear-

Vehemently she cleaves to me,

Pleading regret into my hair,

With one last imploring, beseeching whimper,

She chokes out her indelible words,

“Baby, please,

Learn from me, learn from this,

And take only a man

Without a temper,”

The third is for my middle sister,

The one with sleepless skin.

As she tenderly cradled her belly,

I remember her new softened eyes,

On the night my father’s gaze found fire

And mother led me from the kitchen-

Sometimes in my own bed at night

I hear the fugue in reprise,

“What were you thinking, you selfish girl?”

Words subordinate to piercing cries.

Through her screaming, sobbing, yelping,

Father paints love into sin,

Then comes the sound I can never forget,

The snap of leather on skin,

“She will marry up, if she keeps herself in line,”

Come the coddling words of my mother-

But some nights I hear her,

Sobbing still,

As her room shares

Walls with mine.

The fourth is for my third sister,

The one who looks without seeing.

On the night that she escaped herself,
With wet and twinkling eyes,
She told me through staccato breaths
Of the man with unforgiving hands-
Emotion thrashes at her features
No longer hypnotized,
Exhaling, she squeezes shut her lids,
Betraying daylight's careful guise,
Through her cowering, struggling, blanching,

The tragedy dribbles through quivering lips,

With the painstaking image of a relentless grasp

Constraining inviolably virgin hips,

Her pervading phrase still renders me sleepless

“Sexual does not always mean loving”

Our eyes meet,

But she does not see me

Through tears both silent and ceaseless

The fifth is selfish,

A tear of wondering-

For what will become of me,

For it seems

Becoming a woman

Means receiving good reason

To cry to yourself

Tonight.

But you should feel shame,

Your tears are so crude.

Your pain, so unladylike.

The sixth is for my mother

Who has tried to keep us

Pretty.

For in primping and shushing

And slapping at our wrists,

She knows not

What she’s done.

2012