Mockingjay
01-14-2010, 02:22 AM
Uncle Dennis
by Poetry&Meanness
- based on a true story -
"Oh goodness," my mother exclaims. "You see that? You see that happen there? Oh Father, people jus' get schupid sometimes!"
Uncle Dennis cracks a joke and I'm the only one who laughs, but he doesn't hear me. In fact, he pretends that I didn't say anything at all. So I shut up, and attempt to hide inside myself, as if doing this would make me less... annoying. The conversation picks up again. We're currently in my uncle's new house watching "Cops" on his big screen T.V.
It's been exactly two years since he has last spoken to me. Two years. I am now 15 years old.
Age thirteen was a tough age for me. That year everything had fallen apart like a soggy cookie. Uncle Dennis was living with us then, with my Aunt Sharon and my cousin Farah. We were pretty close. He didn't say much, but I knew he loved me. Sometimes people just know things, even me who was a then spacey thirteen year old girl. It's like knowing that your mom will come home every night, or like knowing the Jets will manage to screw SOMETHING up no matter how many games they win.
Uncle Dennis jokes with my older sister now. They're laughing about some bald Italian guy in a wife-beater pissing his pants on camera. I sit here off in the far corner of the room, begging to be a part of their conversation, begging to laugh with him. I feel like my soul is trying to push itself past my body and reach toward them. And so I pull my knees together and hold myself in, squeezing my knees to my body tighter and tighter.
But it doesn't sit still. Instead, I feel it push harder and harder, their shoves against the inside of my body matching the thuds of my own heart.
Shush, I tell it. Please, shush. Stay still. Stay still. I talk to my soul like a baby, like a little person whose fragile but determined. But I know it won't be quiet. My soul is crying and screaming, flailing its arms and legs so violently that it attacks the inside of my body. Again, the beatings match the rhythym of my heart. But I know it isn't my soul at all. I know it's just my heart beating me up on the inside.
Please stop.
Uncle Dennis says something even funnier this time, and I bite my lip. The whole family laughs, except for me. Instead, I pull my knees tighter.
by Poetry&Meanness
- based on a true story -
"Oh goodness," my mother exclaims. "You see that? You see that happen there? Oh Father, people jus' get schupid sometimes!"
Uncle Dennis cracks a joke and I'm the only one who laughs, but he doesn't hear me. In fact, he pretends that I didn't say anything at all. So I shut up, and attempt to hide inside myself, as if doing this would make me less... annoying. The conversation picks up again. We're currently in my uncle's new house watching "Cops" on his big screen T.V.
It's been exactly two years since he has last spoken to me. Two years. I am now 15 years old.
Age thirteen was a tough age for me. That year everything had fallen apart like a soggy cookie. Uncle Dennis was living with us then, with my Aunt Sharon and my cousin Farah. We were pretty close. He didn't say much, but I knew he loved me. Sometimes people just know things, even me who was a then spacey thirteen year old girl. It's like knowing that your mom will come home every night, or like knowing the Jets will manage to screw SOMETHING up no matter how many games they win.
Uncle Dennis jokes with my older sister now. They're laughing about some bald Italian guy in a wife-beater pissing his pants on camera. I sit here off in the far corner of the room, begging to be a part of their conversation, begging to laugh with him. I feel like my soul is trying to push itself past my body and reach toward them. And so I pull my knees together and hold myself in, squeezing my knees to my body tighter and tighter.
But it doesn't sit still. Instead, I feel it push harder and harder, their shoves against the inside of my body matching the thuds of my own heart.
Shush, I tell it. Please, shush. Stay still. Stay still. I talk to my soul like a baby, like a little person whose fragile but determined. But I know it won't be quiet. My soul is crying and screaming, flailing its arms and legs so violently that it attacks the inside of my body. Again, the beatings match the rhythym of my heart. But I know it isn't my soul at all. I know it's just my heart beating me up on the inside.
Please stop.
Uncle Dennis says something even funnier this time, and I bite my lip. The whole family laughs, except for me. Instead, I pull my knees tighter.