*Looks Sheepish*

Heeeeeey everyone.. Yes, I'm still alive, but, once again, because of the time difference, Taylor keeps getting to all the news before I do. lol, Still love ya, though.

Okay, so I know this isn't remotely Benjelly (Baaaaaaad Moose...), but I was hoping you guys could give me feedback on a story I wrote. It was for my english class, but I don't have any feedback on it, because my stupid English teacher lost it : (. Hmph.

lol, Anywho, just feel free to read it (*pittiful look* - Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease) if you get the chance (And comment : D):


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Me. A word, plain, simple, unburdened by embellishment. A word whose worth is taken for granted, misused, unappreciated. It is written when one is narcissistic, self-proclaiming, when one is at fault, apologetic. It comes to this language of ours for use on many occasions, providing a means through which to express many an unspoken desire, yet I have never sculpted it to my own creation, nor spoken it in haste.

I have walked this winding road a spectator to my life. Those who know the very confines of my soul within have yet to meet Me, for I have not yet met myself. I live in the gray area between right and wrong, between life and death. In darkness, I reside, for the soul who stands before me is naught but an illusion of a mind..s yearning. For I, myself, am an illusion. To each I am a separate being, just another personality contrived to disguise my lack thereof. None of them is Me. Me is a soul lost to the desert, wandering in search of that one man, the man the draft had seized from the sheltered haven of my embrace.

This roadmap is tattered, torn...worn down to its very essence. One would assume such an act against this object would clarify this destiny of mine, that, with such a mess and confusion removed, my true path would solely remain...yet all I see are lines, this tangled web of meaningless lines leading only to words. I..ve grown numb to the puncture of these words, their perforation upon my flesh. Undefined as I am, they hold no meaning to my mind. Until the day when I know Me, I cannot comprehend their significance.

All semblance of normality, of a budding personality developing toward a full definition, was torn from my soul into the uncertainty of an oblivion on that day he went missing. The war had plucked him from our clutches, had sent Me toward my tunnel of darkness. Only he could guide my tattered soul in a fight from the bog black air that claimed it. All that I loved was gone, all that I danced became meaningless. What had once fueled the expression of a million emotions had waned to a flat line of empty movement on the cardiogram, merely expressing the void within my heart.

I had so long stood in stagnant waiting for word of his status, to have a body shipped out to us as a common brown package, given the ..honor.. of a burial under the flag of a country that had never needed his protection, with the artificially somber recognition of a president who would fail to so much as flinch at any mention of his death. It is a peculiar thing, waiting in hopes that one you love will be announced a casualty, simply so you yourself can finally let go of that person, can come to face the empty heartache of their absence. Emotion is so often a selfish paradox...yet, somehow, I plod on in wait.

I have spent so much of this life in waiting, in an endless line of dos and don..ts, of rights and wrongs, of questions I was too scared to ask, of thoughts I didn..t dare voice, of emotions I could never comprehend. I am waiting for that defining moment, for that sign that shows me what I..m meant to do, shines true on who this person is, on who I am. I am waiting to meet Me, and when I do, I shall proudly extend my hand in the greeting of a new friend, in the embracing of a new day. Until that day, I shall stand alone, unnerved by my loneliness, undefined by my soul. I shall wander until that day has come... Only then will I choose my road. Only then will these lines bend into arrows, will they point me to the words I know.

The waning light of the summer evening, peeking through the fog of the heavily burdened air, fills my eyes, revealing their sorrows in the stories they tell. I turn away, away from those that crowd the chattering streets, from the minds that would seek to judge this person who stands before me, the one I pretend to be. I walk, holding no particular destination in mind. It is merely another stroll down the lane, another pasagiada in the moonlight that so many have romanticized. The beams of light I bask in, I fear, are different than those that reach out to stroke the others. They leave me naked, exposed, searching in vain for a savior, one to shield me from the truth this world of night presents, one separate from that others have led me to accept.

My tired legs lead my body to the destination of their choice, a smoke-filled bar in the haven for the recluse of the city. Its counters rustle, speaking to me through the clamor of the nightly crowd, each drinking hefty sorrows into the depths of all ignored, yet never truly lost to an inexistent life. These substances that glimmer in the dimly lit room, they are the escape. Each sip is a hidden gateway, creaking on its hinges as it opens to another realm; each drop will be the dictator of events. All that is seen, all that is felt is a fabricated truth, a lie to keep the simplicity of that ledge and its promised escape far enough from the steps they take...yet it is also this dreaded liquid, cruel as it is in its intentions, who persuades the vulnerable mind to do the unimaginable. Still, it is an escape from one pain, into the unknown agony of another, an agony that is pleasure to the troubled mind. I take these slow, purposeful steps to an empty stool, raising my hand but the slightest measure from the counter in hopes that I will catch the eye of the man who lives behind it, choosing for himself a life of sweet mercy upon those in need of rescue, he preys upon these wandering souls, to destroy what will they still hold dear. Men around me, their breath revealing a thousand tales, size Me up, eyes roaming Me for signs of an unfulfilled desire. I turn to look away, discomforted by the intensity of their stares. When alas my glass comes with an echo of possibility in the contact against the hard wood of the counter top, my heavy eyes raise in acknowledgment, revealing their silent gratitude beneath the weary gaze of drooping lids. I fix my every thought upon the confessional place before me, hiding purposefully within the feeble, glass-walled church upon the moistening napkin. Solemnly passing him a bill in payment, I rise, taking with Me the glass as I walk in successive, painstaking motions to a far corner of the room, barely visible through the thick cloud of smoke that seeks to ensnare my senses. The first sip is the most straining to take; that which comes after becomes simple, trivial in comparison, a routine of self-loathing, and one of self-satisfaction. It is a fulfillment of each need, and every desire that drives the mind through the anguish of a single day. Tilting my head back in preparation, in anticipation of the fiery liquid as it slips seethingly down the tightening hallway of my throat, I take it down, a single, futile gulp leading Me to my release. My every need met, I walk hazardly from the smokey chamber into the chilling air of the night, further evidence to show me, to remind me of the unfeeling way in which the earth has turned upon its axis, shielding me of each warming ray of sun that would seek to penetrate the thick wall of my stupor. Breathing a sharp and ragged breath, I allow myself to taste the atmosphere within the dampened cavern of my mouth, to see the shivering world with the clarity of these new eyes the alcohol has nurtured. The brutalized key slips into the lock on my apartment door, just as it has done upon each night, the sun asleep with the exhaustion that has claimed all others in my building. Unmoved by any desire for comfort or peace. I throw my broken body down upon the poorly constructed and thoroughly unpadded surface of the futon couch, not bothering to extend it to account for my movements throughout the night. In the darkness I will do as all the nights preceding, thrashing from side to side in the violent fury of my consciousness. As with all other morning, I shall rise upon the roughing surface of my tanning carpet, my exposed skin torn and burnt from the nightly contact. Is it the world of the waking or that of tormented dreams that breaks Me more? I no longer trust my eyes to make out these faded boundaries.

My mind tires as I walk these unnamed streets, the lights that had so often illuminated us in the pleasure of our company mocking me as they lead my arm to shield my eyes. Twelve years. Seven months. Three days. I look down to my watch - Four hours and eighteen minutes. Time spent in solitude, in pain, in the sea of images that seeks to suffocate me with this garrote of despondency and unparalleled desolation that each brings to rive this gullet, my time-choked throat. Who is it to elect one sole person capable of such love, of shouldering such a burden? It is a broken, impotent feeling, a serrated edge upon which we so willingly thrust our hearts. In the bare and inconsolable truth that haunts Me, I know my life is one destined to surcease in pain, a consequence of all denied as I eye these dispirited film rolls of an avarice unquenched, this life so privileged in the 'what ifs' and the 'if only'. It boasts its opulence of shattered promises and the abandoned dreams. His life has yet to truly leave this body we now share, not within these echoing depths, as his waning light illuminates the sorrowful chasms of my soul. No, he is the culprit of my every despair, in waiting there for a chance to overlook my pain as it seeks to claim Me, body, spirit, and waking life. I am loafingly devoured in waiting, these jaws gnawing at the flesh that binds Me as I fall into the spiral, downward, downward, downward. Where it leads, I do not wager a guess. My soul is a wanderer, calling out to its love. Out there I wait for him, though his his death is apparent through this devastation and unnerving silence within. It is he who has sought to claim Me in this time I have spent in waiting...yet each time I turn from that railing, I put down that bottle of pills, it is that sweet and tender image of his face, that smile and loving adoration that reaches to my weathered heart, to soothe the fever of my sweating brow.

These rays of light afflict their torments upon Me as they dance their life across the window sill, yawning in their awakening, shaking free from the hefty sorrows that have plagued them in this night. I rise, shrugging off the confinement of my knitted blanket as I creep onto the chilled tiling of the unfeeling bathroom floor, lead only by the crack of light that peers out across the door frame. The mirror greets my eyes at once, shooting through my being an image the pain within it. The lines of exhaustion have now clearly been etched down from my eyes, a lasting trail of tears in the river beds run dry. My jaded consciousness begins to spout its ideals, those of deep longing and desire, yet not without the uncanny improbability that joins them, hand clenching sweating hand. The world is a web of memories we have carelessly trapped ourselves within, and messes to be untangled. Some things are simply too far gone, too worn by the merciless wind of time to be mended. But what if a destiny could be rewritten?

I continue to contemplate this insanity, that of the living world that others believe me to belong within, as I feel my hand slide tentatively across the cold metal of the door handle and I take it in my sweating palm. I turn it, agonizingly slowly as though I know what I am to face...but it is just another day, another audition, another let down in the making. What is this fear that lies gathering within that room? My steps are tedious in their pace, my heart steady in its bum bum, bum bum as it seeks to tear its way from the prison of my chest. What installs in me this sense of dread? Then I come to clearly view my destiny from afar. I see him.

My legs are not my own as I run into the long forgotten sanctuary of his waiting arms. They are not those that have so long danced the empty choreography of my life, but rather those so long lost to their despair. I throw off these unseen crutches that have so long defined my person, so long confined me to the meaningless drawl of an empty expression.

We do not speak, for words will only serve to ruin the ecstasy we have achieved. He takes my frail, cracking hand in his, a rustic gravel of taught flesh, leading us away from the prying eyes that look upon our scene in the curiosity they boast. Slowly, we move as one, emotion driving our dance. It is an unmatched satisfaction at the end of my search, a message ringing out clearly that this is who I am.

I had died, had been sent to the insurmountable depths of the viscously unkind afterlife, only to be reborn at the sight of him. No God I know of was there to ease my forgotten body through the crowd, to take my hand in a soothing gesture, to rock my tattered mind to sleep in his arms. No person, divine nor that of mortal flesh, had ever rocked is the creaking chair beside my bed, nor embraced me in any expression of support. Is there a God? Such a puzzle I cannot solve. I can, however, attest that it was I, alone, the sole warrior in this dredging army, to find the one I..d lost, the person I was to be.

I sit down upon the creaking seat and rotting wood of the chair at my desk, drawing paper and a pen from its drawer, and raising my feeble hand from the desk top to write upon it. It is a letter that shall never be sent, to no one person, in particular, but it is there, a tangible statement in an upturned world of inconclusive mayhem. In it, scrawled carefully across its tainted pages, is a definition, not of a word, not of a phrase, but of a person and the untold tales that lie within. This is who I am, what I have dreamed. It is an account of all I have trespassed against, of every time I have raped a smile of its significance to conceal the emptiness within. It speaks of every embrace I have been too damaged to sink my body against. I reach to its finality with the simplicity of a single line:

I am not intelligent, I am not good-looking, and I doubt that I shall ever make that much-needed difference I hope to see in this world, but alas I can proclaim, without consequence or remorse, that I am Me.
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~ Moosey ~