Moments later, Reshaleh contemplated, ice-still below the pool surface, the pink blush of a rose petal. Thick streams of sunlight penetrated the watery glass, illuminating microscopic filaments that sparkled in undulation of their watery goddess, their mermaid, whose olive skin glistened like fresh maple and whose black curls glinted plump-purple in the syrupy afternoon light. When the petal's papery thin edges gave into a sudden pucker, Reshaleh painfully regarded another creature's presence--a wriggle approached her from the pool's misty, moss-swirled depths, flattening flowering adolescent curiosity with its smooth, green body: a tadpole. Reshaleh tilted her head to better observe the strange animal as it thrust forward in a jagged line while her glossy curls hissed like snakes, escaping to the silver, sun-streamed surface.

I wasn't allowed to do this

(shh)

That Summer by the Sea

It's summertime and the white tips of sailboats are visible from where we sit on the balcony. The sea-smell lingers just beneath my nostrils and there's you, tall and lean like cypress trees, stretching your limbs. I squint in the shining white of the hot summer sun. Your hand leaps across the table and lands on mine, it feels cold and clean. A rich breeze blows, fattening the curtains so that their middles stick out like the bellies of the great old men I see on the streets, supported by their canes and their thin, wispy wives. The curtains are puffing up their cheeks with the wind and I feel dizzy.

Dear Mina,

I found this for you from tumblr.


--

The Only 12½ Writing Rules You'll Ever Need.
If you write every day, you get better at writing every day.
If it’s boring to you, it’s boring to the reader.
Get a writing routine and stick with it.
Poetry does NOT have to rhyme. Poetry does not NOT have to rhyme.
Resist stereotypes in real life and in your writing.
Writers read. Writers read a lot. Writers read all the time.
Make lists of your favorite words and books and places and things.
There doesn’t always have to be a moral to the story.
Always bring your notebook. Always bring a spare pen.
Go for walks. Dance. Pull weeds. Do the dishes. Write about it.
Don’t settle on just one style. Try something new!
Learn to tell both sides of the story.
Stop reading this post. Write something!

http://curiousgirl.tumblr.com/

(PS: sorry for neglecting to draw. :( )

And the Night of the Stampede

20,000 kisses. One for the boys who never looked out for me, but promised and then broke their promises, rocking back and forth to the music, rocking back and forth in the pale blueness of the concert lights. I wanted, for a moment, to let the crowd take me, to trample me into pulpy, squirming bits of light pink and beige, to rip the skin from my cheeks and expose it, beet-red, to the alcohol-scented crowd, the weed smell like burning shit in the backdrop, and the drunk girls smothering kisses unto their boyfriends’ faces, gnawing the rubbery ear. And in the end we are all alone. We are all simply alone, however hard we try to deny this truth, with text messaging and facebook and phone calls that last an hour only because we talk about everything we did that day, from washing the dishes to brushing our teeth to shitting in the toilet. I floated in the pale blueness, the lights bright and blinding, the lyrics stabbed to death with curse words, three-edged curse words, sharp and hurting against my tender flesh, and I miss those days, of flawless pink cheeks and a pure, pure heart, a pure heart like almonds whose meat is smooth and white.

the top one was what I intended
the bottom is what the internet thinks it is in CMYK

Plump, watery

Breezy July, lavender tears (plump, watery) nostalgia crept where prisoners slept (liquid transactions, bathroom tiles colored with blood, urine, remorse). Why can't we unknow what makes us stiff, serious, stuffy? I want to look upon life with the same dreaminess, hopefulness and loveliness as I did before.

The breasty, German woman’s doll-faced daughter pooped in her underwear, wriggling out of her trousers in order to liberate the smelly lump. She complicated our efforts to find peace, toying with the delicate afternoon atmosphere as if it were one of her pot-bellied four year old friends. She paraded through the garden where posh British families dined on lemon tarts more yellow than their hair and less sour than their expressions. Oblivious, the German doll tottered by, her squeals threatening to shred their conversations of parties, politics and Paris. I watched in amusement as the plump, shiny-faced dissenter refused to conform, sloshing water, milk and coffee, so that each liquid uncurled like my curiosity, temporarily staining skirts and shoes, permanently staining our reputations--this motley crew of four--who never could, and never would, stride through the ostentatious door of showy social gatherings--where verbal exchange occurs less between people and more between their expensive commodities.

I remember the quiet garden where the rabbits slept. A dying tree’s slow decay attracted swirls of summer flies--plump and iridescent like the black cherries on which they often feasted. The rotting-water smell provoked my Discomfort, until he finally snapped open two yellow-pink eyes and growled awake. While circling the garden--bare-footed and barren-minded--I sometimes was awoken from my thick, liquid trances by a pale thread of sunlight. The light, so foreign to a garden shrouded completely in an unctuous shade, extracted my sympathy, and I once even invited it to soothe my naked shoulders, which were roughened by several hundred goose-bumps. Within the sunlight’s silver womb I uncovered my dreams. They fluttered forth, colorful and bright-eyed, their lips cracked with widening smiles while I grimly acknowledged their presence. After all, they rekindled in me the same robust, scarlet fire that long ago nourished my graying health…I could never forgive myself for once letting them go, for once commanding them to leave.

I filled my mouth with answers of you:

your whereabouts,

your recent girlfriends.

They commanded these responses from me,

without stopping to

acknowledge that I may not know the answers, either, that I was just as afraid of losing you, and that you had left one cold, blue morning while the birds pecked apart the morning silence with their practiced melodies. I am not one for leaving lovers half-frozen in bed, one leg draped over the mattress--this one eager to leave, to urge you to stay--and the other leg, still warm with a long sleep, desperate to never abandon its safe place beneath the thick sheets, inside the small home.

I remember orange afternoons, kites colored like lollipops, we bared our arms for the warm weather, felt the itchy grass, felt the love of one thousand years. I remember plump water balloons, the hot, milky nights, cradling a tea-cup, cradling your heart for it existed in mine. I remember worrying about everything and nothing at all, drifting bare-feet through the grass. I remember you rubbing my dome-shaped mosquito bites, soothing me into sleep so that I would not awake crying, howling your name, scratching my eyelids purple. I remember how quickly those afternoons melted into night, how quickly the sun, like an apricot seed, slipped out of sight, slipped out of sight. Though I am much older now and possess many worries, many real problems that require tending, nurturing, banishing, I still think back to those days, or perhaps think forward, because it is I who have moved back, it is this that is backwards, this painful regression, I am strangled by things, by empty, hollow things, I am suffocating underneath the unnecessary pressure of chores, obligations, doings, I no longer live, but exist, I am a soulless, smile-less human doing.

Long before I threw myself to you the orange birds produced quick melodies with their purple tongues. I felt like a small girl, observing them while many important situations unraveled before me, situations I had nothing at all to do with. For example, the first female British prime minister was appointed. I squinted hard at her picture, she seemed to have accomplished so many things. The newsman mumbled for an entire hour just listing all that she had witnessed in her life, all that she had contributed and all that she had been a part of. People like her made me feel painfully small. They made me feel like there was something wrong with sitting idle, cross-legged, clawing through trash, observing birds, counting freckles, chasing sheep. I felt rather odd, spinning my separate lies, feasting on fetid fantasies, dozing in damp basements, peeling warm, mushy tangerines. What would I have done?

In another life, years from now, after we traversed the boundaries separating life from death, I might find you reading the newspaper in a yellow room that smells sweet like honey-swirled-tea or delicate scones that crumble with a baby’s touch. Someday, years from now, you will re-exist to blend backwards in time like the moon shaped cookies they piled on plates we painted those very afternoons before you left, those orange afternoons when the sun stopped for a moment longer and illuminated our stooped figures, illuminated our deep concentration. I needed to say goodbye. I could not simply wait behind the door until the car’s short gasps faded, I could not simply stand biting my fingernails with tears breaking free and plummeting forth. Instead I ran. I ran many, many minutes to you, I secured my arms around your fragile waist like a rope, I wanted to learn your body’s complicated grooves and lines, I wanted to relearn them and memorize them. The years have passed, and how quickly they rustled by, I feel much older than I did those days, I feel my hair beginning to fade, beginning to lose its color, beginning to turn frosty-white like the lilies you once set upon my work table, as if to haul me towards you, as if I was skipping out of reach. It seems we are forever lost, until I separate myself from life and perhaps as another being will find you reading the newspaper in a yellow room that smells sweet like honey-swirled-tea.

"One day," he whispered, "I will flee this town and take you with me. Together we can live in a quiet village and drink in sunlight. Never will we feel oppressed. Do you believe me? Please believe me." The sun skipped through the leaves and for a fleeting moment, the world glowed gold. Everywhere I see you and everyday things change. It pains me to look past the water's edge where the deer once sipped its sweet juices while you played accordion-songs for me. How quickly life changes!

Fashion Post 1

Wet summer storms blew open windows while we sat alongside the ancient, decaying woman. Her dead-leaf lips shaped soft consonants and vowels and her round, hairless feet peeked from underneath the blanket like moons. Those nights the green-cheese moon illuminated our smiling faces as we unearthed a thousand -year old memories. When she died they removed everything, after folding it away in small, neat squares I knew she would have detested. Within one day they wheeled in a new bed, along with a shiny vase of fake roses. Only one mark of her presence remained, and that was her smell, a sweet melody of baby shampoo and jasmine flowers. She was cold and gray when they pushed her away, still tucked beneath her thin blue sheets. I noticed that I could no longer see her feet. I wondered, then, if she’d shrunken over the years. She always hated that room and the stiff grin of its plastic flowers.

I heard my grandfather’s voice, on the other line. I imagined that he sat slumped in one of the living room’s many elegant chairs. His form, so undefined next to something of such sophistication, offered a hilarious juxtaposition that weaved a smile unto my lips. He then told me of you. You were visiting Shiraz along with your mother. I wondered, then, if your mind ever skips back to me. Do you walk past the marble columns that wear their cracks like silver veins, and imagine me, fingering the cold stone, struggling with a deep-rooted sadness, longing to see it go? Do you walk past the chicken coops, and hear the violent scratching of its many hens and roosters; do you smell their warm feces, the stale watermelon, and think of me, squatted on the floor, ankle-deep in mud, poking my fingers through the wire to provoke a short-tempered rooster from his half-sleep? Do you, while awaiting your lunch, imagine me scampering into the room, my cheeks matching the cherry-rice I offered to you? Do you ever run amongst the pebbles, get dust in your eyes, and think of how I nearly lost my sight, long, long ago? And how about the stray dog’s soft moans, do you think of my vain efforts to soothe his frightened cries? When I am alone, many years from now, with silvery hair that runs past my shoulders to reach my ankles, I will still think of you before that change took place. I will always think of you as I loved you: bright-eyed and curious, laughing through the day. Your dirty-knuckles and shameless grins always made my stomach ache.

Before I grew up, I grew down, down into the silver sea...

I went out to sea
To smell its salty air
And came back with memories
Sprouting from my hair

The poky apartment felt even smaller during the summer. Illy drifted in and out of its rooms, trying to quell her swelling frustration with the soupy heat. She considered stripping off all her clothes and wading in ice water so that her blood might freeze. After an hour of standing half-naked in the living room, the heat like a knife through her chest, Illy finally left the apartment. Outside, she breathed in the city’s warm and sticky smell, a smell shaped by buttery pastries, spicy Indian food and car exhaust. The afternoon sun shined so brightly that the young girl’s world started turning silver as she glided towards the ocean.
While she walked, Illy overheard conversations floating from outdoor cafés. A minute later and the screech of car horns sifted over the delicate pitter-patter of conversation, until every sound became part of one larger sound, and she couldn’t quite tell what she was hearing. Soon, she could hear the salty swish of the ocean’s waves.
The beach was always crowded because most people in the city did not own backyards. They couldn’t find solace in itchy carpets, or pretend that their bathtubs held the entire ocean, especially all of its unique life forms, like spiky sea cucumbers and the fish that felt slimy-cool as they swam between your legs. On her way to the shore, Illy observed families that gathered with their sandy towels, half-eaten watermelons, and last night’s potato salad. They grinned at her with seeds shining in their teeth. Meanwhile, pot-bellied toddlers revealed their day’s findings: several dozen wriggling hermit crabs, each with shells that sparkled like M&Ms. Illy smiled before continuing her journey.
The ocean water felt deliciously cold around her pink ankles. Before moving further into the sea, she stood a moment to observe how her big toe sank into the squishy sand. The cool water felt so soothing as it pushed against her warm body, that she couldn’t help but swim further and further. Slowly, the families turned into colorful specks dotting the coastline, and their chattering dissolved, quickly replaced by the swoosh of the waves. Moments later, Illy looked around her and was stunned to find that she couldn’t see anything but the sea. The foamy blue water rippled before her, behind her, and all around her. She slapped the water, attempting to push herself above its surface, but was less than shocked to find that it did not at all help her pitiful situation. Illy could just imagine tomorrow’s newspaper headlines declaring her tragic death at sea, her mother wouldn’t even finish reading the article because her tears would swirl with the ink and create a goopy mess.
She was about to cry when she felt something slimy lightly skim the bottom of her feet. Illy froze, anchored by an acidic fear. She could either look down or wait for the treacherous, three-eyed sea monster to slice off all her toes, and then the blood that would flow, how quickly it would attract more vicious creatures! She looked down. But to her surprise, instead of razor sharp teeth or sinister yellow eyes she saw a mermaid’s tail that shimmered like stained glass during the quiet calm of orange afternoons.

Artist's note: I was experimenting with Artist's Sketchpad, an Opera Widget, while making this. I must say, the colors are disappointing...

The moon glowed greener than the fuzzy forest of mold Reshaleh once discovered sprouting from the fleshy peaks of her grandfather’s false teeth. Her nightgown fluttered in the breeze, a breeze smelling slightly of boiled cow fat and crunchy pomegranate seeds, a stomach-warming, soul-nourishing, satisfying smell, that buried itself deeply beneath her senses.

Sometimes I follow you,

with broken wings drooping towards the floor and soundless footsteps reaffirming my invisibilty. I must remind myself that I do exist, though you might not notice me at first. When I step out of darkness, with yellow lamp light slipping down the smooth contours of my body, will you see me, finally? When I peel away these coarse garments will you be surprised to find that my skin is not an ashen gray, but rather a glossy opal that glows brighter than the milky pearls you strung around her neck, long ago?

Dusty Memories

When I found you the sun had already settled comfortably between the trees. The sky blushed deep red as I sat cross-legged beside you on the grass. Crickets hummed a nostalgic melody, of years as they scurried through the exit door. I’ve realized that time is a thief with a story to tell, of sleepy eyed boys with milky skin and fat curls for hair. I want to watch you forever as you indulge on half-opened dreams, drifting gently into sleep.

While no one looks I pretend that I’m a rock star, posing and winking for an imaginary audience. There’s Mr. Mouthwash, who’s tall, regal form smells of fresh mint leaves. With my hair fastened into a loose ponytail, I can relish the swish, swish sound as I bob my head to music. Miss Soap Bar’s shiny crown of bubbles always makes me smile. I squint and pose, jerking my hips to the left, to the right. Someday, when I’ve gone public with my talents (so far the bathroom's been my only stage) they’ll ask me in an interview, why I started. I’ll have to bring my yellow toothbrush, Mr. Mouthwash and Mrs. Soap Bar, remembering to ignore the shocked smiles, thinking They’ll never understand.

With tender skin and translucent hair, the elderly, eyebrowless woman emerged from morning’s stringy fog stopped over a crooked cane, her dry, bloated tongue increasing her struggle to breath in the thick and frigid air.