not being beautiful is a relief. no ‘so pretty’ by family or friends, no ‘you’re so gorgeous’ by strangers or lovestruck acquaintances. nothing. I am nothing.

with a face and body so unremarkable, so average that neither breath is taken away nor lips pull up in disgust, so utterly ignored after one glance of recognition, I am invisible. I am not there.

until they are introduced to my mind, I am a blank slate. I am nobody.

when I speak, I become. when I create, I exist. when my shell is ignored and my ideas materialise into language, sound, ink, only then am I alive.

I have no beauty. I have a mind.

writing-prompt-s:

You are a NASA scientist with the budget of the U.S. Military.

“What changed?”

“I’m sorry?”

The alien waves three of their hands around impatiently. “On Earth, that is what I wonder. What changed. They did not want to let you to us, in the beginning?”

The scientist shakes her head. “Not back then, no.” She watches her crew stumble off the ship and into the worried hugs and environmental adaptation injections of the natives. The alien has stopped administering her own medication, and just looks at her now.

“So they changed their minds, then. About us. About other planets.”

“No.”

“I do not understand.”

The scientist smiles. Which is good, but the alien knows that liquid coming out of her eyes is a bad sign, and the mix of signals is highly alarming. “Please, do explain. We waited fifty years for you, and you come here hurt like this.”

“None of them changed their mind. We just acquired the – let’s say, we finally got the means to come here.”

“That is good,” the alien nods, clearly relieved. “Then they believe you now. They will come here too?”

“You have to understand.” Suddenly, the scientist is very quiet. Her eyes are shiny and wet, and the alien finds that she looks more human than ever, more emotional than any scientist the alien knows.

“You have to understand,” the human says again, a drop of liquid slipping down her cheek. “I wish we couldn’t have come here. I wish we’d still be there. I wish there was still war and pain and, you can hate me for this if you want to, I wish there was still someone suffering and waiting for it all to be better.”

“Why would you ever want that? Nobody should be in pain, no living thing.”

The human looks at the alien. Her face is wet all over now. Tears, the alien remembers, that is what the liquid is called.

There is not scientist anymore when the human whispers softly:

“We wouldn’t have to be here if they were still in pain. We wouldn’t have been able to go here if there was anyone left to wage a war. We wouldn’t have needed to go here if there was anyone left to die.”

Will we leave something behind?

Will they still know me tomorrow, next year, a century or a hundred after this?

Will our bodies echo through time like a wave along the ocean? Will our souls connect to the universe at an infinite numbers of points, each a touch, and still sing our songs when all else is gone and darkness is the only one to listen?

Maybe not. We could become nothing.

Or we could become part of everything.

We just may.

and no matter how lost i was, how afraid and small and broken the world had left me; the books of my past and future welcomed me in ancient halls as their child, and taught me about storms and stars and life’s paths as their student, and made my fingerstips into quills so that ink could lace my veins for the paper that waited for me.

their words and their worlds have always been, and will always be, my home.

and when i leave that home one day, it will be because i have been called:
for my own world, and all its stories and syllables, whisper for me and my ink to bring it to life.

The Boy Who Was Not Like Them, I Promise, He Is Different

He gathers all his courage, every last bit, and sits next to his beautiful girl. “Hey there,” he says. He’s loved her for so long, and she likes him, he knows that. “How are you?”

But she likes where he loves. She’s friend where he’s obsession, and he needs more. He needs it all.

She is looking into the distance, out the window. He’s used to it. He keeps talking. “Can’t believe you’re single again. What is it with you and the guys? I mean of course none of them deserve you, only the best man does. Someone who’s close to you. Who’s honourable and good and treats you well, and I suppose that last guy didn’t do that – “

Her hand touches his shoulder. “Please don’t,” she says quietly. Her eyes are so dark, oh, he wants to drown. “Don’t ask me out. I cannot reject you forever.”

“Then don’t.” There it is. His chance. “All your boyfriends, they only stay with you for a week and then I never hear of them again. I’m not like them, I promise. I’m different, I’ll treat you like a queen. You can be mine, baby. Sweet baby.”

Maybe, if he’d been paying attention, he would have noticed. How the other boys (and a few girls, too) shy away from her as soon as their hands get sweaty and their eyes dreamy around her. They sense it. He doesn’t. “Please. Go out with me.”

She’s silent for a long time. Her fingers are long and oh they’d feel so good on him, he thinks and tries not to lick his lips, he could kiss her with it. He’ll do it, soon, when they’re a couple. Finally, she sees him as he is.

“Come home with me after class, then.”

He’s never heard sweeter words. And during class, he stares only at her, hoping, imagining how it’ll be in a few hours.

They walk home. She takes his hand, and he almost cries out. It’s cold as ice. How strange, that he only notices now, but then again he’s never touched her skin before. Weird, that he hasn’t realised that before. Something feels different.

Her flat is on the ground floor. The door is white. Her hand is tight around his now, and his knuckles start to hurt. “Wow, you’re strong,” he jokes, or tries. His tongue is thick in his mouth, filling it like a swollen wound.

“Come on in.” It sounds like an offer. It’s not. She pulls him in like he’s a child, a jolt of pain rushes through his wrist. “Ow, what the hell!” His resistance is late, but he pushes his heels into the ground, cries out once, they’re in the bedroom.

He screams.

The bones on her bed are white as pearls. She has sorted them, by type first and then by size, and the skulls sit on the headboard in an arch of hollow ivory. His girl, his beautiful girl, puts her soft mouth on his hurting wrist.

“You could have been a friend,” she tells him softly. “I loved you so dearly, my friend. But you couldn’t. You wouldn’t love me as I was, free and kind and by your side. We could have been so good, my friend. We could have been companions, hadn’t you looked at me like I was meat for your tongue to lick into and eat up and tear apart.”

“Please.” His vision blurs when he starts crying. “Oh God, please.” The fear is coming just now, as he drinks it all in, his mind roaring – piles of boy clothes, a container with red liquid, and the gorgeous darkness of her eyes as she leans down to rip off his hand with her teeth.

While he wails until his throat goes hoarse, she sits on his legs, turning him from one into many parts, and says: “Now you’ll be torn apart by the queen.”

“Only I am human,” he hisses. His heel digs into a little silver face, the metal thrumming with pain signals racing towards the machine’s brain. “Now clean the floor, I want this done by tonight.”

The machine with a human face is silent.

“I am a human,” he says a year later. The new neighbours stare at him, pupilless eyes focusing on him with a soft click of shifting gears. “Don’t worry about the rumours that my kind is, well, ah – I assure you that we’re not dangerous. I want us to get along.”

The silver-faced family is silent.

“Please, please,” gurgles out of his throat five years later, the chrome of a sterilised table biting into his naked back, “I’m only human, I can’t hurt you. Please, oh – oh oh God, I beg you. I beg you. I’ll do anything you want.”

The perfect, silver human above him blinks. A hand lifts into the air, waves, and a crowd of more silver and gold and blood-smeared copper approaches.

They surround him, metal fingers on his ankles and wrists, and they are silent.

“Watch closely,” the perfect, silver human says. “I want all of you to pay attention and document this properly. You do not see a species taking its last breath every century.”

“You’ve changed so much!”

Thank you.

“I didn’t exactly, you know, mean it as a compliment.”

I know, but I’m taking it as one.

“It’s just… I never thought you’d end up like this. Look at what you’ve become.”

I am looking, every day.

“Seriously? You see yourself and still don’t understand?”

I understand.

But do you?

I think we could learn a lot from the robots we’re building. Imagine talking to a machine fitted with an artificial intelligence that can communicate with us. We’d ask so many questions, just because we hope for something new so badly.

So we’d go to the robot and ask, “What’s your purpose?”

The robot would make a little beep or whatever noise it chooses to signify processing of data. “My purpose is whatever you programmed into me,” it would say.

And we’d be disappointed. Because that’s not new. “Oh.” Already thinking about ways to change the robot, we mutter to ourselves: “Aren’t you lucky, knowing exactly what you’re meant to do.”

The robot hears that, of course. Maybe it would laugh, maybe not, but it would certainly reach for us in its own way of soothing. And if we’d listen closely, I’m sure we’d hear pain in its emotional voice.

“Aren’t you lucky, choosing exactly what you want to do?”

A story is a story is just a story.

True. And more false than anything.

Our fairy tales and legends, our myths and harbingers and endings, all the ink-whispering hope against our eyes and ears, they cannot be broken into anything less than proud, wild stories.

And, more than anything, a story is never ‘just’ this or ‘just’ that.

It is everything, and it allows us to become.

When I was in elementary school, a boy came up to me during break. He’d been playing soccer with his friends and the ball went sideways somehow, and ended up near me. He went after it to get it back, but stopped next to me. I was reading. I did that every break, just like he played soccer every break.

I noticed him standing there, but didn’t say anything. When he didn’t seem to be moving anytime soon, I looked at him.

He was staring at me. I stared back.

“Why are you reading all the time?” he said.

I thought it was a stupid question, so I probably sounded a bit annoyed when I asked him: “Why do you play soccer all the time?”, expecting him to get angry or make fun of me.

But the boy, I’ve forgotten his name or never knew it anyways, just tilted his head a bit. He nudged the ball with the tip of his foot, then kicked it back to the other boys. “Mhm. Okay,” he said, and ran off.

He didn’t do anything extraordinary. We didn’t become friends, we didn’t talk again and I can’t even remember his face. All he did was to say okay.

Maybe that’s all we can do sometimes; saying okay even when we don’t understand.