I'd Rather be a non-educated Rubber Duckie, aka NERD.

I halfway figured out how to compile audio and text together into a video!! The only problem is that the text is all weird-looking, so please excuse this time of test and trial. Still trying to figure things out. But hurray! My first youtube video, kindof! I'm going to make a different youtube channel, but I don't have a username. Perhaps, thejessiepress?Maybe I can make something serious out of this! That's fairly exciting. If only AP tests and SATs weren't looming over my head.

Anyways, this poem is called I'd Rather Be a Non-Edcuated Rubber Duckie, a.k.a. NERD.

haha. enjoy:) It was inspired by rumors, so hurray, hurray.

Love Makes the World Go ‘Round

Okay, so you know that Laws of Life essay? I wrote one last year and forgot to enter it, and now it's a required assignment this year, so I was wondering if the one I wrote last year is good enough to turn in, or if I should write a new one. It's about Nashville; here it is:

A cooling sensation filled my body as I stretched out my fingertips and embraced the wind that so easily enveloped me, until at last I fell to the beckoning arms of gravity. My eyes fluttered shut; my feet lost connection to my brain as they freely galloped down the steep hill, jumping, dancing. A smile spread across my face and transformed into a laugh as I glanced behind and saw bundled figures attempting to roll down the hill, figures that were instead playing bumper cars while painting horizontal and zigzagged shadows across the landscape. These were, needless to say, the newly met friends who I had spent the past week in Nashville with. These were the people who I had cried with and laughed with through homeless stories and service projects during one short-term mission trip.

My feet hit hard cement, and with a body still filled with the light ecstasy of the night, I jumped in the air and cried joyfully into the sky. I was surprised to hear a reply.

“Are you drunk? Are you drunk?”

An odd question. My eyes wandered around until they locked on a dark figure, sitting alone on a bench. Walking toward him, I shouted out, “No! No, not at all! We’re just having fun!” He smiled and nodded; I could tell he was another tragic homeless story on the streets of the city. We dived into a conversation, so much easier than the past conversations I had tried to strike that week. The presence of the others started to fill the space around me, and we huddled into one captivated body and listened in awe to the man’s tale of faith- a faith that was starting to crumble. Fifty years he had spent on the dreary streets of Nashville; he asked us if another year would really make a difference. The man, Richard, then took off his shoe and revealed a deformed foot; one red toe bent around the other, and the big toe was half the size of a regular one yet equally swollen and huge; it bent this way and that way until the foot could not even resemble a body part anymore. The grotesque image stole the words out of our mouths, and a silence hung over our heads.

“Let’s pray…” a small voice whispered. Holding hands, we murmured our prayers in one voice, willing comfort and love into this life. Amen. Richard looked up with eyes anew, a bright twinkle of hope that had not existed before. A child’s smile shone on his aged face.

“Thank you… thank you…”

Then, I knew. I knew that we had saved a life, that we had completely altered the path of another human being, and that we had flown down a hill and played the roles of angels in Richard’s cold and lonely life. Our eyes sparkled with identical tears, and my hands clasped the hands of the girl beside me, holding it dear to my heart. For although we had re-colored Richard’s hope to a purer shade of white, he had planted seeds in our hearts that continue to grow- even to this day. He taught us that even a small conversation or a random act of kindness can calm the roar in another person’s life, and that so much more lies behind the fundamental needs of a human. Given, we need our food, our shelter, our health. But perhaps the most significant thing that a human needs is not something that teachers can train little kindergarteners to recite, but it is instead something abstract that can’t be stuffed in a bottle and brought to a desert island. For we realized that the beauty of love was what instead made the heart keep beating, and love was what my little church group vowed to bring back home to Atlanta.

---
So yeah, hopefully somebody will tell me yes or no?
I honestly don't have time to write another laws of life essay, but half of me wants to.

I'll post later on today about other things in general, but I have webassign to do.
Oh webassign... why dost thou hate me?

Excerpt.

One bench. Eighty-eight keys. Ten fingers- long, graceful, slender fingers.

The air vibrates in waltz, in tango, in jazz; a classic. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Pause, jump, twirl, land. One, two, three, four.

An elderly man slowly pushes back his chair, hesitating for a split second as he remembers that he has never danced before. A song floats through the air, and he smiles at the memories the melody carried. His life was slipping away, what was there to lose? Shyly looking across the glass table-for-two, he offers a hand to his aged yet ever so beautiful wife. “Would you join me for a dance?” They step in easy rhythm. One, two, three, four.

An audience excitedly fills up the seats of the grand symphony house, marveling at the chandelier that glistened in the dim light and the seats made of velvet and silk. A playful melody dances through the air, and a smile lights every person’s face as the music lifts the heavy burdens off their shoulders. Enjoy the show, whispers the tune. Enjoy the show in a one, a two, a one, two, three, four.

One, two… Jewel Serenity Carwin opened her eyes, and the music stopped. The images vanished; she was alone. She sighed and leaned back against the piano as she stared at the large empty room before her. A wooden floor seemed to stretch for miles around her; there was nothing but a black grand piano in the middle of the circular wooden floor. The walls that took up one half of the room were freshly painted- white. Windows made of nearly invisible glass made up the other half; they stood so tall and elegant as beams of sun warmed the room.

Nobody called her by Jewel. It seemed too awkward, calling an acquaintance a jewel when in reality a graphite stone probably would have better sufficed for resemblance. They called her Serenity. Peace. She was quiet, with grey eyes that seemed to look right through someone’s soul. Nobody could ever recall hearing her voice, or even seeing her teeth for the matter. A strange aura followed her, yet people still felt at ease in her presence. She was everybody’s best friend for gray days, simply because she never talked and only listened. She was forgotten when the rain passed.

Serenity glanced in anticipation at the ancient clock placed on the piano. One more minute… she clutched the piano for support. Thirty seconds… she closed her eyes, and tightened her clammy fingers around the side. Four, three, two, one…
She gasped as her breath escaped her, and she tumbled off the seat, landing on the ground with a heavy thud. Dark clouds covered the sun, and she crawled across the stretch of wood, clawing at nothing as her insides seemed to tear themselves apart and vulnerably spill into the darkness. She cried out toward the deaf sky; she whimpered as the thunder mocked and sneered at her in disdain. One last pain-filled breath escaped her mouth, and then suddenly, the clouds parted to reveal one brilliant beam of sunlight.

Serenity paused for a second then stood up. She dusted herself off, and she walked the long distance out of the room. As if nothing had happened.

Smile One More Time

This short story was inspired by Whirlwind; the girl is very real (as well as her smile). Feedback/criticism is welcome; this was a response to the Reflections prompt: "Beauty is..."
And this place was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful places I've visited yet.

I wasn’t expecting much when I timidly stumbled into Azalea Park, an old and tattered apartment complex in metro Atlanta. Needless to say, I was scared. I shied away from the thought of handling a room of rowdy third-grade children, especially when I found myself staring into the large and barren parking lot, shadowed by menacing apartment buildings that stood stiffly on the yellowed and withering grass. The naked trees threatened to fall as they shooed me away, howling that this was no place for me. I wasn’t looking forward to the coming week. As I clutched my lesson plan notebook and a carefully selected sticker sheet for the star students, I suddenly doubted whether I really wanted to do this, to step out of my comfort zone and tutor children in this run-down neighborhood of shabby apartments. But it was too late to quit now.

I slowly crept up to the building that would house me for the week. It looked no more welcoming than any of the other apartments; it only looked less intimidating because it housed a small, red flower that sat outside the window. This piece of shrubbery stretched out its petals, yearning for a drop of water and a beam of sunlight. But its attempts were in vain, and now, it sat shrunken and withered, awaiting the deadly breath of the next breeze.

This building was not intimidating. It was pathetic.

I cracked open the door, and found that I was late. Orientation had already begun, so I found my place in the back of the room and settled in to listen for any details I had missed in the informational packet that I’d already read five times. To my surprise, tutoring would only last for thirty minutes every day; the other ten hours would be dedicated to nothing but nonstop playing with the children in the neighborhood. “Show them love,” the director said.

So I sat on the curbside, with a cluster of young girls eagerly crowded around a tiny basket of chalk. Red, yellow, blue, and green - they were hypnotized by the possibility of a rainbow on the road and a pot of gold at the end. One girl, Jossie, begged me to play the role of a mother in her house that she had just drawn with a piece of chalk. We slept in our chalk beds, ate dinner from our table, ran down the stairs, pressed buttons on the elevator, and yelled that our house was crashing down whenever a car drove over. I was amazed then at how much fun I was having with a stick of chalk and a second grader’s enormous imagination; she was satisfied with simply pretending that her life was more glamorous than reality. Jossie put the chalk down then and tugged at my sleeve, looking up at me with large, innocent eyes and an enormous smile that was wide enough to affect every other feature of her face; her eyes crinkled into reflections of her grin, and the bridge of her nose scrunched up to reveal the tiny teeth in her mouth. I was frozen in place by an unexplainable force, and for a few seconds, I was almost confused at being bombarded with such a dazzling smile.

“Will you come to my house please?” she asked.

I hesitated. I was a bit intimidated at unexpectedly intruding on her mom’s privacy, but I finally obliged. How could I refuse? When I doubtfully creaked open the door, I suddenly found myself in a flurry of arms and flower-printed clothing, until I was pressed into her mother’s bosom and wrapped inside her large arms. She was hugging me as if I were her long-lost daughter and not as if I were a stranger who she had seen for the first time.

“Bienvenido!” she cried, welcoming me inside the small kitchen. I offered her a gift - a large jigsaw puzzle that depicted a few men on the street of a marketplace. It wasn’t an exciting picture, but the mother accepted the gift as if she were receiving the Nobel Prize or a new convertible; she clapped her hands and called her daughter over to begin piecing the puzzle together. I watched in awe as the pair attempted to match one square to another, with genuine grins plastered on their faces for the entire stretch of time. “Thank you,” she said over and over again in her broken English; I felt as if I had just cured a woman fated to die of cancer. How could anyone be so happy at receiving a jigsaw puzzle?

As the week progressed, I grew more and more attached to Jossie. She came to my class every day, and afterwards we went outside and sat on the curb, sucking on our ice pops and watching the cars pass by. I learned more from her innocent second-grade thoughts than she probably did from my lessons. She taught me of the beauty behind the singing birds, telling me fairytale stories about a lonely bird flying after his lost love. She took my hand and demanded that we perform a talent show for an imaginary audience. She showed me the games the kids played on the streets and the desire they had for piggy-back rides; she helped me rediscover the fun in simple games like hide-and-go-seek. At the end of each day, she’d take my hand and look deeper in my eyes than any other person had ever tried to look, with a face of earnest admiration and trust - so earnest that I felt almost guilty for knowing that I was far from the perfection she imagined me to be. But then she smiled and stirred up that inexpressible feeling in me again, and suddenly, all my doubts were erased.

At the end of our last day, I took Jossie and embraced her, but to my surprise, she pulled away from my hug and looked at me with a determination lit aflame in her eyes.

“Are you going to be here tomorrow? I’ll see you, right? You won’t disappear?”
I nodded and stroked her head, then bent down and looked straight into those large, innocent eyes.
“I’ll be here as long as you remember me.” I replied.
Of course, such a vague answer didn’t satisfy her, so she tried again.
“Will I see you next week?”
I sighed. “Jossie… no, but I-”
“-you’re going to leave?”
“No, let me finish. I’m going to leave because I can’t live here-”
“Why not? You can live in my room. We can be like sisters!”
“No, Jossie… I have a family at home. I have to go to school. I only came here to visit and tutor, and I have to go back home this Saturday… I don’t live here.”

I could see tears swelling up at the corners of her eyes, and I felt like a monster. But a monster was only a thing that hid in the closet or slept under the bed; it only triggered tears in a child for one night before disappearing in the depths of darkness again. But I had unleashed tears not from a temporary scare, but from her heart, where years of hurt and pain had already settled ever since the disappearance of her father and the fragmentation in her household. I was worse than a monster.

“Hey, I’ll come visit, okay? Twice a month at least. Okay?”
Her sniffles caught in mid-air, and silence enveloped us again.
“Really?”
“Sure.”
“Can we celebrate Christmas together?”
“Of course; I’ll bring you presents and hot chocolate, and we can sing Christmas carols for your mom.”
“And we’ll play hide-and-go-seek like we always do?”
“Of course.”
She paused for a moment, contemplating whether she should buy my answers or not.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”

The moment our pinkies linked to cement that promise, her face broke out in that familiar smile again. A bird flew out from behind the apartments, and another followed. Music seemed to play in the background of my mind, and the trees swayed along with the rhythm, the branches welcoming our renewed friendship.

And then I saw the beauty in this squalid neighborhood, as the tall buildings that once seemed ominous revealed themselves to be full of bustling life and vibrant colors. I saw the joy that seemed to be permanently drawn on the kids’ hearts, and I saw how easily they were able to find love in all the slightest things. This place was not the ugly godforsaken place I had first imagined it to be; rather, it was one of the most beautiful places I had ever set foot in, more beautiful than the pristine beaches in Cancun or the unsullied snow on mountain peaks. This place, apartment complex, neighborhood, group of people, family - whatever it was called - was able to touch a person’s heart with smiles and welcomes that a teenage girl like me could only have dreamed of. This place made me realize that such joy and happiness was, in fact, possible.

The director had told me to show these children love, but little did he know that they were the ones showing me love, and as much as I tried to make it up to the families with lessons and gifts, I knew that in reality, it was Jossie and all the other smiling faces in this neighborhood who had puzzled together the pieces of joy in my world.

And finally, the red flower on the doorstep began to grow again.

Poetry Place

I remember caving in.
I remember being stretched at one end,
Pulled at the other,
Then ripped apart from head to toe,
As if I were a hated toy.
I remember screaming, and crying,
And pounding at the wall but finding
That there was no escape.
That no one could hear me.
That I was in fact,
Alone.

I remember searching.
I remember making blind passes,
Desperately grasping at any remnant of love,
Reaching out my arms toward any open door,
Only to be shut out.
Only to pushed down again,
And again,
And again.

But then I remember you.
And I remember how reassuring that old tissue box was,
And how consoling your senseless jokes were.
I remember how you tried to bake me apple pie,
And how your face crumbled when you discovered it salty rather than sweet.
I remember how you attempted to call me with words of support,
And how you serenaded my brother when I refused to answer the phone.
I remember how you sent me kiwis through the mail,
How you hung portraits of Pokemon characters on my wall,
How you tried to sign me up for a therapist,
And contacted the rejection line instead.

I remember being difficult.
I remember walking ahead and leaving a mess,
Moving forward and leaving you behind,
Running away and leaving no trace.

And then I remember you,
Picking up my trash,
Calling out my name,
Searching for my face.

And you always found me.
I just never found you.