Summer of My 18th Year by Elinor Skinner (top 50 books to read .txt) 📕

1 Original

2 Write, Draw, and Sing

3 End?

4 Maybe Human?

5 Anywhere to Be

6 Who am I?

7 Name's Sake (In Progress)

8 Matches

 I'm melting like the ice-cream on the kitchen table; I had left it out to thaw cause someone stuck it in the back of the freezer. The swamp-cooler isn't helping, cause I need to shower just from taking an afternoon nap. It's plain hot to do anything, but that doesn't matter. My mother walks in, “So what's the plan for this room?”; I could be honest, but I know better so I mention that I cleared out a pile at the foot of my bed which I happened to throw in the closet yesterday and saying “Little by little, you know?”

She leaves, than shuts her door. I drag my feet down the hall, and I find a vanilla-bean milkshake, I sigh, at least it's soft enough to eat. I open the drawer... rainbow sundae spoons was always my statement. Today I was cool blue, like the ocean, fading in and out waves of contentiousness. I took the carton and the spoon, knocked my door shut with my foot, flopped on my blue comforter, staring at the popcorn ceiling just like the other seventeen previous summers. Well almost.

This August there is no school, not for me anyway. I'm broke, my family is broke, but it doesn't make a difference, my brain isn't in hurry to go back. Blissful nothingness, an empty mind, free of ellipse graphs and what onomatopoeia means, or who was Carter and what makes plants green. I'm okay not remembering, and I don't want to, not soon at least. I scoop some of the vanilla slurry onto my tongue, my head gets hit with an icy uppercut from the roof of my mouth. My thought process freezes for a second.

Than I return to the sound of crying, not form outside my door, but in my heart. What was it crying for I had no idea. Maybe it's because I been betrayed three times in my life by friendship, love, and what was a second home; or maybe it was because I found someone who would stay with me forever, or the time my older sister said she looks up to me when it used to be the other way around, or when my mom said I was a positive person. Happiness or pain, I didn't know, maybe it was both.

The negative taught me to understand, the smiles and laughter taught me hope.

I sat up, so I could lick the carton clean; Spotless. I left it there on my bedside table with the ocean spoon in it. I decided to go from my comforter to my cloudy gray desk chair only a couple of steps away. I opened the plastic hardware and poked the button in the top right corner. The screen glared at me while I clicked on a picture of someone who never existed, and typed in my secret. It recognized me and I waited til the icons appeared from virtual space.

It's all that matters now; despite the scattered paintbrushes, and half finished drawings; the stack of notebooks on the floor with indistinguishable writing smeared with tears and fringed with blood from paper cuts. Practically speaking every page is partially torn, some in shreds to make mini-basketballs to shoot into the mess of tissues and cheese-stick wrappers along with my other pointless ideas.

What should I do? I'm wasting time, but it happens to be one of better past-times. Yes, just doing nothing at all, or doing things that doesn't change anything, not how anyone feels or what the world thinks, just me on my keyboard. As my friends say “Messing around like she always does.”

When you are messing around though, you wake up and your nineteenth birthday was a month ago. You want to get out, you miss the smell of pencil shavings, the murmuring of people your age, even a whiteboard with a textbook assignment. The beginning of your craving for money, just to have someone lecture you, even if it means reeking of anchovy pizza you had to make before you went home. You can't believe yourself, but now that you are awake, you can do something about it. Just maybe, but I don't want to have boredom as a roommate anymore; I want the whole space to myself.

Passion. All eloped in words, and images.

A place I want to belong, to breath, to live.

Something that makes me feel alive.

My lust for dreams and a vivid imagination

to become a reality.

The ink gliding over paper,

pages about a glowing world put

into feverish syllables.

However when letters fail me,

lines make a salvation.

Lines that create

people, grass, water,

the clouds I would touch

if I had the wings to reach.

Yet my hands shake with excitement,

preventing the ink from becoming

something with meaning.

So arises my own voice.

I once shared emotions through it,

because of how naturally it came to me.

It was once easy to pour out my soul with my voice.

Now I have chosen to remain in silence.

Truely Alone.

I stand in a field of green grass. Today the sky is a clear blue, as the sun warms the soft brown earth. Simply staring at the name so beautifully etched in the pale stone. I set flowers in front of me, as a token to show the great love in my heart. I can not see their face nor hear their voice, sorrow and joy try to pour from the inside like the tears from heaven. My eyes are watery for I am unable to bring them to my side once more.

The pain is a wound that even time can not mend. I would slip under the grass to them. If only I did not have this burden. I must carry it, everything is left to me. Even though I will save many, and I will meet and give happiness to others.

Although they become my friends, I will still be Alone.

Shock. Purely alone again under the tree. Only later did I realize that I didn't want to be that way.

No one likes someone with a knife for a tougue, or their hands covered in blood. What was becoming of me; was worse than the cruel people that I was surrounded by all the time. I nearly became everything that I hated. How close was I from being a demon?

Than I learned to become human again. At least I want to learn.

It was difficult, a challange, but my restrainants over the emotions inside of me remain in place. A tightly shut lid that I am unable to open, can't even loosen it. Closed doors, locks, and chains drapped over with darkened curtains to hide my memories.

Silence has come over my voice. The restrainant is automatic now. These days I can't even cry if I wanted to, my eyes don't even water. Yet I have tried to be human. Only failing to show my emotions.

Maybe some day though I will return to being human.

Even now I don't belong anywhere, to no one. All I can do is keep a place, where I am supposed to stay.

I have a feeling that; It will be a long time for me to find a true home. I maybe a rebellious daughter, the hard-working student, a loyal friend, the violent lover, a bold sister, and a distant dreamer.

All of me only fills a role in someone's life. I am not miserable nor happy. I hate myself, but I believe that I can make a difference. The change is what I want to become, a change for someone I will belong to, yet only the time it will happen, if I had already met them without being aware.

I feel as if I had been standing still, for I have not changed.  Everyone else is changing, I'm concerned. I feel like I will eventually be bad for everyone I love.

So I guess I want to belong to someone, but I'm afraid of hurting them.