Black

I was born confined to that cold imitation of a bed. Crammed between a patient monitor and a dresser swelled with medications and doctor records. I became indistinguishable from the chalky furniture surrounding me. Living in this husk made it painful to hear them painting my birth defect as a beautiful thing. In their portraits I'm alike an aged statue, limbless but lovely and profound. Yet I knew every waking moment was fruitless. I'd lay on stone with no memories to dwell on, as every memory was a contemporary moment. What are you if you're void of future, void of present, void of past. If I had the chance I'd let them live a day in my life. If you could call it a life.

I've expressed my depression to my father since adolescence. And thankfully he began putting an effort into taking me out of my cage. While he couldn't unclip my wings he would dress me, pin my holter monitor to my chest, clean my soiled garments, and strap my backpack to my wheelchair. He still spoke to me in that gentle, infantile voice as he pushed me around. Trying to get me excited to go to the thrift shops. Despite my constant disapproval. Of course I was, again, prodded down the musty isles of others' abandoned belongings. I let it slip my mind that each item contained a thousand memories. Every creepy porcelain figure was once some elderly woman's prized possession.

Dad presented just about the entire store to me until the combination of forgien dust particles rendered me red nosed. And through the odd scented blankets and cracked snowglobes he ogled over. I had enough and decided to beg for the first shitty item to meet my gaze. A black, leather bound book rotting in the dusty corner. "Hey dad…" I murmured in my usual unused voice, before calling out a second time, "Dad!". Surely enough he invited me into his conscience for once in a millenium. "I think that I'd really like that book right there." I confirmed, gesturing with my brown eyes. Honestly, I had an easier time reading people than literature and dad was clearly suspicious.

"This book? Are you sure? I thought you hated when I'd read to you." I backed myself into the wrong corner… "Dad… Please Just get the damn book. I'm starting to get hives from this place!" I desperately complained. And to my surprise he complied, placing the dark skinned book in the little bit of lap I had and rolling me up front to pay for it. As we rolled along the sidewalk that shook the bones of my chair I basked in the mystery of the book. I wasn't particularly a reader, but I enjoyed the good bit of oddity each story held. It was wonderous to indulge in the richness each piece had. All taken from a specific person in a specific circumstance.

The nights were so long. And the only one beside me was my chronic insomnia. I pondered how to even go about opening the thing. And oddly, as indifferently as I felt towards the item, my mind swirled around that black book. Even my core was put to use in getting my nubs beneath the cover of the journal. Inside was a field of childish dribble. I began deciphering it yet as I read I began to feel the pages enclose my body. Each wrinkle and depression was a rising tide pulling me out to sea. I was sent into a drifting kind of REM state. I struggled to keep my eyes and my conscience

connected but the twine between the two grew thin. Until finally it tore. Ushering me into an altered state.

A woman wrapped her arms around me. I could smell her sweet southern musk and the gel in her hair. The kind of smell that by instinct will draw a coo from a child. She, in her limitless ability to be gentle, would caress the coarse surface of my corkscrew hair. She would lay with me for hours, even if it was inconvenient for her. Or she would put a pin on Ella Fitzgerald and sway her moo moo like a real flapper. I loved her with more than my heart. My dearest momma. Even in our rube town she still found ways to get me educated. Getting the men she worked for to teach me mathematics and english. When I was very young I let myself believe the men went to her room to teach her as well. However I understand now everything in life comes with a price. Anyway, knowledge of her affairs never soiled her innocence in my eyes.

Yet each time I smelled that man's cologne I became more of a doberman than a child. Purposefully lingering around my momma and barking to scare off the tramp. Momma started shooing me away after a while. It broke my heart but I made tracks for her. I'd see how far my short legs could get me. along the dirt country roads, into the swampy forests, across the empty fields. In these forgien lands I could be as free as I wish. Prancing about in my bloomers and sifting my skinny ash brown legs through the long, dry grass. Long jumping and making dingy sounds like a Banshee. I remember particularly the scent of clover flowers drifting on the wind and the motherly sun embracing every inch of my dark skin. Walking home from there was the worst part.

Walking home from there was the worst part. When the energy was already sucked from my body. The sweat soaking into my blouse made me itchy and chafed.

But walking through the swampy wood became especially eerie the day I saw it. That huge burnt symbol, making black clouds of ash in the wind. My young mind lingering on its origins. Exploring fictitious tales of that it was Satan's mansion erecting from hell. The image was burned into my mind. Yet I withheld it from momma, tucking any traces of the sighting beneath my tongue. It wasn't enough to occupy my every thought, I had to see it each time I returned to my field. Usually I avert my gaze in fear the thing would latch into the back of my eyes making me a Frankenstein of my old self. Yet today I decided to confront the thing. I stopped myself and stared at the soupy mud painting my shoes brown. My eyes carefully crawled to the base of the infrastructure, lingering on the wood, shiney from the burn damage. A glut of gnats drifting in and out of the lattice under the porch. Then they flew up to the 6 foot cross sticking out the front door. I smashed my eyes close until they sealed themselves together.

As I opened my eyes again I felt the cool breeze sifting through the net over my window. My straight hair sprawled across my pillow. Unused, weak, stumps of legs still shaking in fear. That cross. That woman. That girl. It felt as if I could run, a feeling I was never gifted. I felt such fear, such remorse. Was it really all a dream? Or... The book laid beside me as if seducing me into diving back into its world. I hastily crammed my nubs under its folds of thick paper. My greed for a second taste of that surreal adventure caused the seam of the frail page to bust. Initially I ignored it, but as I began to read those first childish letters I noticed the green watercolor stain saturating the page. The color of a corroded penny. Baffled by the phenomenon I'm compelled to tear the page further.

As I tear I can hear the voices of the past distantly calling out. hundreds of voices misting from the paper. Some scream in despair others laugh with full hearts. The crowd surrounded me so closely until they all swallowed me whole. What I held wasn't a piece of a diary at all. No, what I tore from this book was $10,000. The room fell completely silent. Silent and yet louder than ever. My body began to shake. My lungs vacuum packed in my chest. I couldn't seem to get myself to cease vibrating, both in fear and joy. More money sprawled across my lap than I've ever seen in my life, this had to be an illusion, a dream. I felt tears welling up in my eyes and leaving transparent pearls on the surface of the money. I need to catch my breath, my face feels tingly and I'm exhausted from sifting through this adrenaline

Dad didn't ask how I came about that enormous amount of money. He was just glad to have the funds. It all went to putting fingers at the ends of my arm. They were metallic, but that wasn't a take away. I had what I've wanted my entire life. I was rolled amongst leggy carnations and forget me nots in the garden of the nursing home. The summer sun squinting through the curtaining strings of the willow above me. An odd laser of sunlight would bounce off my metal skin and make a flare on the concrete. The breeze whistled a tune through the cracks of my wheelchair. Dad let me tend to a woman with dementia. He said if I apply myself I may land a job there. I mostly tend to her things. I found out her name is Mrs. Elanor Poplar. As the day grew long I spent the orange evenings reading the black book.

Years past and I forgot of the field. I entered a new hell, highschool. I didn't have the first inkling of what to do that first day. I'm sure I looked like a mess, but then I met someone new. She showed me so much I never knew I needed to see. all the best spots in the core of the city. I can't express the kind of excitement her face alone brought me. Last night we went out together for her birthday. Some boys she knew had a hoedown way out in the middle of nowhere. Even without landmarks I knew my way home from there and started planning my route back the second we arrived. I've never seen anyone dance the way she does, making bellows with her dress like that. Our night was cut short when two bastards decided they didn't like what they were seeing. I shouldn't have done it. Shouldve kept my mouth shut. They held me back the entire time. My heart wouldn't stop pounding and screaming. Her hands grasped at air as she was pulled towards them. I wanted so bad to fight back, to summon that cross from that house straight through those idiots. But I couldn't. I can't. I watched as they stole from her. Weeks later she hung from her closet. My first love was gone before it began. Clenching my eyes I truly wished they'd never open again. Then her image would be the only thing inside me. Alive and pure.

I made it to the final page as I drifted out of the OBE state. My heart feels swollen with grief for a girl I never knew. Subtly the true reality creeps back. The heart monitor sounds and yellow clouds out the window. When a blurry inscription on the back of the last page comes to view:

"Property of Eleanor May Poplar"

Her.

Watching this woman's memories drain from her drew a fork in my road. I had the hands to tear pages from her life. But I was robbing this woman of her life. Half the page had turned a greener tint making me drool in anticipation. Or was it tears to my own cruelty? I looked at Mrs. Poplar once more before tearing the final page from the binding rings. Green leaves fell from my fingers. $10,000 . The garden of roses and get-well-soon cards surrounding Mrs. Poplar fell quiet. I placed a hand on the rose in her chest. while it still sang it was clear that she wouldn't wake again. the husk of the black leather embraced her chest, paperless, and lay there for the rest of her eternity in awakened slumber.