The first day of Thanksgiving break, I crammed as much practicing and composing into the morning as I could, then rode to the café. I flung open the door and dropped my bag on the floor.
“I’m here for the rest of the day!”
“Hurray!” Ema cried and ran to me. I picked her up and tickled her. Emily came out from the kitchen dusting her hands off on her apron.
“We’re so glad you can spend more time here,” she said.
“As am I. But you have to put me to work while I’m here. I may be on break but I can’t sit around all afternoon doing nothing.”

He laughs at her as she dances across the small kitchen to the deep farmers sink, setting the stack of dinner dishes in her hands gently inside.
“What are you doing?” he laughs, shaking his head at her. He leans casually up against the counter, his arms crossed on his chest, his eyes following her every moment.
“I’m dancing,” she says simply, twirling back out of the kitchen and into the small dining room to gather more dinner dishes.
“But there’s no music.”

this immovable soul
touched by the immensity
of the inevitable
disappearing of stars
clings-
in this shower of darkness
-to the roots of that tree
inextricably connected
to life

I can't rationalize the welling
Disappointment in my throat
I'll never be like them, you know
Far away I'm a blur in your vision
Up close I move to the peripheral
If only I could finally reap what I sow

But dear, quite frankly
If it involves you I don't

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Shamrock

Shamrock Harding is, ironically, a little down on her luck. After spending five years at a prestigious girls' boarding school, she's heading home--just as she was starting to fit in. Now she not only has to leave her new friends behind, but reunite with her old ones. Most of whom she didn't part amicably with.

I’d see them every Sunday morning as they drove into the church parking lot. He’d drop her off by the front door, and then she’d wait for him as he went to park the car, greeting whoever was at the front door with a sweet smile and warm hug. Then as he’d lumber up to the entryway, he would reach out his long arms for a giant, heart-warming embrace.

I've become lost in my own fear of failure. I cannot take a pen to paper; cannot draw the simplest sunset for fear of ruining the perfect whiteness of the page with my pathetic attempt at beauty. I sit, stagnant, waiting for an idea that will not mock me with its mediocrity.
And sitting does not suit me.

There was a little cubby
In the nook of a nook
Under a log
Behind a waterfall.

In it lived a whisper
Of a legend of a secret
Of a myth
Named Alice.

She was the fairy of the forest.
Though she never told a soul.
Her job was to keep things happy.
But she was growing old.

Hey, Mister. I don't know if you'll see this. At the moment, I have no intention of showing you. I opened this word processor because I felt like I needed a fairy tale. That made me start thinking of you. You, my own personal fairy tale. Look at us, living a cutsey little happily-ever-after. Don't you ever think that our hard times will ever mean it's not that.

It was the Monday of Finals Week last quarter, and I had just about had enough. I sat in the empty break-room at work, trying to keep my sobs from bursting out, worrying and stressing out about how I was going to get everything done. It wasn’t like I had been dawdling – an emergency baby-sitting opportunity had cropped up on Friday night, and I had worked the entire weekend as well. Combined with the stress of studying for finals, I had already not been in the best of moods that morning.