People say that time is relative. I never quite knew what that meant, but I know my clock isn't.

10 a.m.

It’s my little brother’s bar mitzvah today. My whole family is in synagogue this morning celebrating this great accomplishment for him. He is going to be a Jewish adult.

Cursed at birth,

burned alive from the hearth,

of fire and blood,

a single flame lit the flood,

I am an Icarus

Flying too close to the sun

I was not made for this

Not ready though it’s begun

I wanna soar through the sky

I don’t remember life before her,

And I can’t imagine life without her.

Close as it may be,

This is not love.

Heavy and cold. That’s what time feels

like, in case you’ve ever wondered. It weighs a thousand pounds and turns your skin to ice.

Right now is one of those times,

When a memory hits you over the head like a sack of sloshing sand

Impromptu, yes, but loud and present also

the caged bird

is louder than the

f r e e

Changing my tune every single night,

The lyrics here just don’t seem to be quite right,

Locked myself beneath the rushing riverbed, secluded,

Gasping for breath but sinking beneath this weight, I’m deluded.

I heard a whisper becomes the first time we lose.

All the badasses I know are yellers.

I want to die, my grandmother tells me

but there’s so much still;

the sunbeams unfractured by loss, changed only by those stained panes of window glass

I have lived for eons;

I have been here since this world was born, and I shall be here until it dies.

Wind and rain shape me, morph my body at their leisure,

Zebras don’t change their stripes for a reason

Year by year it is only the tiger,

Xenia exhibited only to succumb to

Worry and defeat.

The clumpy oatmeal slides down my throat with incredible slowness. The spoon clinks against the side of the bowl as I go in for another bite, causing me to flinch.

I hear the thumps of footsteps as they descend the staircase.

“Good morning, my beautiful Elizabeth,” Ike says, kissing the top of my head and tucking a loose strand of wispy, graying hair behind my ear.

I smile, comforted by his warm touch.

We need to know everything

A sense of immediacy

A sense of distress

From what?

When has this been a race?

Did I miss the start?

Or are they all truly behind

Without any word to tell me why,

I was ordered to be thrown in the sea

For I thought certainly, I was going to die

Without knowing what my life would be

Sunday night

I am wasting water, as always. Wasting water on words…

Stupid

Ugly

Coward

Quitter

Loser

Spacey

Words I have called myself

Drowned in throughout the day.

Waking up the next morning,

Could I be next?

Arriving at school,

Will I be next?

Entering my classroom,

What if I am next?

Simon turned the key in his doorknob lock and slowly opened the front door to his dark house. He put his right foot in the door jam and tried not to make a sound. It didn't matter. Tiny hands reached for his thighs. Sighing, he managed a weak smile as the child embraced him.

Plastic stars clung to the ceiling of my room

As my sister whispered to leave on the light

I was never the one scared of the dark

But maybe mine was just different than hers