So Much Writing!!!

Booker Martin

World Lit Honors P2

Ms. Tompkins

4/24/15

Virtual Reality

Rays of light escaped through the wall of trees and scattered onto Alyssa’s face, inducing a series of rapid blinks. As she walked, her hand reached out to grasp the cool metal beneath the peeling blue paint of a pole under one of many school hallways.

She brushed aside her blend of gold and red hair resembling ocean waves reflecting the setting sun, and sat down on a wooden bench that groaned under her weight. The breath she had been holding escaped through her lips.

Her eyes dropped like pebbles cast off a cliff, falling onto the faded texture of her shoes that lay over cracked cement. Shoes no one had complimented her on, even though they were new and she wore them with hopeful pride.

Hopeful someone would notice.

There wasn’t much left of that hope. She felt invisible like a ghost that was constantly walked through; her presence causing strange shivers of discomfort as if the others knew something was nearby, but couldn’t quite bring themselves to identify it.

Her eyes closed as she became enveloped in silence. Finally, some time to myself, she thought. The solitude was bliss; she didn’t need to mold her clay into a sculpture meant to please someone else. Slumping, she let that clay droop over the wooden slats of the bench.

Her eyelids fluttered in response to the sound of footsteps. Who has come to disturb my meditation? Her precious seconds were dwindling, threatening to bring about an afternoon of work and stress.

Footsteps, and then a shadow growing closer! She was starting to panic, her hand plunging into her bag in search for her one escape. Determined, her fingers danced across the interior fabric until they rested on the smooth surface of glass.

Just in time to block her face from the stranger, Alyssa slid the phone in front of her eyes. Focusing above the illuminated shield, she fended off the boy’s glance that flickered in her direction. Her mouth remained close, but her eyes glared, “Move along.”

Intimidated by the obvious sign of repulsion, the boy quickened his pace and locked his gaze straight ahead. She lowered her phone, a feeling of regret settling upon her as she felt a familiar sense of nonexistence.

Seemingly against Alyssa’s will, her thumb slid across the screen and pressed upon a rounded square. Suddenly, the glass became a vacuum that sucked her attention into a virtual society of supermodels, alliances, shares, likes, comments, tags, friends, cliques, jealousy. Her being shrank as she compared herself with the glamorous faces. A sickly feeling spread through her veins, a desire to have her own pictures adorned with the same praise found under photos of her schoolmates. Just once, she yearned for her popularity to surge and for likes and hearts to overflow from the digital buttons beneath her pictures and to seep into her soul.

How she would consume them, like Valentine’s Day chocolates on which she would indulge until they lost their taste, until the praise melted and spiraled into a whirlpool that sucked her away into a world of fantasy.

A world of lies.

Her phone slipped from her hand, tumbled across the woven threads of her bag and skidded to a stop on the concrete below. Alyssa felt tears in her eyes. What have I done? How could I damage my self-worth in response to photos that are nothing but lies, the tinted corner of a life, the revised, staged, and approved for release fraction of a human who in reality is nothing but imperfect?

Reality. Alyssa had fallen alongside her phone, crashing into reality as her trembles faded and her breathing slowed down to an echo of her relief. Reality was the warm rays of sun in her face, the cool breeze wiping away her tears, and the colorful trees swaying to a rhythm of their own, trees she never even noticed until now. Reality was the few friends she did have whose opinions, compliments, and company meant more than a million likes. Reality was the boy buried beneath the shadows of a distant hallway, briskly walking away due to her cold disregard for him. Reality was now.

She picked up her phone, but instead of tapping on the rounded square she lowered her finger slowly until it forcefully pressed against the glass. The square seemed to quiver with the fearful anticipation of losing control over someone. Alyssa was shaking as well, her dignity overcoming her hesitation as a cross appeared in the corner of the square. Could this truly be my escape?

She took a deep breath of reality and tapped, deleting the app that had haunted her for so long.

I’m more than the reflection of myself on the screen of a phone, hidden behind layers of false masks and identities forged on social media. Maybe instead of looking into my eyes the same way I look at passing strangers, I can start looking out of them.

The girl with fire dancing in her hair got up and walked away, and the millions of tiny screens spreading the vile plague of lies were outshone by her light.

Hourglass

Letting go

is like saying good-bye

to yourself

and watching the shell of your body walk out the door

The soul of your being

slink through the windows at night

like sand sifting through an hourglass

that was your life

measured in grains instead of hours

because enough seconds would pass to form beaches

without you reaching out

to let the dust brush your fingers

and rest in your palm

You let the sand fall without grabbing hold of those hours

those seconds that could have been an eternity had you

only chosen

to take them

Scars

In the mirror

only the scars show

The skin that was an ocean

Rising and falling to the force

of fidgeting fingers

Forever forging new faces into the population

of prisoners etched onto the parchment

that was once pure unblemished skin

A canvas placed in a wooden wagon

Dragged over dusty hills

so that it became encased in brown

Drenched in the evening rain

till the dirt tainted the once perfect paper

Wheel hits rock and the canvas falls on the ground

So worthless it isn’t recovered

It lies there

Waiting for someone to overturn

the opportunity buried beneath layers

of mud

and dirt

and grime

caked onto the canvas

that is torn

tangled

twisted

tortured

transformed

into a masterpiece of red and rotten

patterns punctured into

my perfectly pure skin

Remember

Remember the sunsets we painted

Across the sky

Orange meeting red

Purple sweeping across the clouds

Gold showering down upon us

Dusting the leaves of trees

Dotted along the hills we moulded

The earth our clay we pulled

Into mountains and pushed into caverns

The rain our tears when

They tried to tell us

We could do nothing

This world we built around us

An illusion laid on the sheets of paper

Crumpled so the hills crashed into each other

The trees collided and the sunsets set the world on fire

Tossed amongst other worlds

And galaxies

And universes

In a basket of memories I can no longer remember