“Start with what you know, then re-invent it. Art is magic, no argument there, but all art, no matter how strange, starts in the humble everyday. Just don’t be surprised when weird flowers sprout from common soil.” Stephen King Duma Key—How to Draw a Picture (IV)
Below are three stories two drawn from my real life and another completely made up but born from tiny seeds of everyday life.
My First Real Kiss (real life)
When I was 14 I had a desperate crush on a boy. He was a stoner, which for some reason made me like him all the more. Around that time I had a really fuzzy dream about kissing someone while sitting on the ground somewhere. It wasn’t so much what was in the dream that made me remember it and deem it important but it was how I felt in the dream. I felt amazing.
A short time after the dream I finally had the opportunity to talk face to face with this boy. We happened to find ourselves sitting next to each other, on the floor, at my friend’s house. He kissed me and oh my gosh that dream was nothing compared to what it felt like to be in his arms. Butterflies fluttered up and down my body from my toes to my head like they were on some sort of charity run.
After we finished kissing he gave me an Ozzy Osbourne pin. I kept it and still have it tucked away in an old jewelry box. We started dating. I self-tattooed his initials into my leg. When I went to visit my dad for two weeks in the summer he broke up with me for a 17-year-old with boobs. I was crushed for at least two weeks.
He squeezes my hand. The rings he wears cuts into my skin; my eyes water.
“I trust you” I say but as I say it my throat burns. The tears hurt. Will there be more pain? “Owe.” I say. He squeezes harder. “I trust you.”
I’m not sure he notices that he is hurting me. His gaze is off; he is thinking of something else. I whisper his name.
“Hey…” I say.
Most of me says run away from him. There is too much to him but…the dreams. They’ve called me ever since I can remember. It’s like every piece, every clue dreamt has pointed towards here; the old empty train tunnel, the river, the dried up tree that stands like an old grandfather with gnarly hands.
All of my dreams have conspired to this moment. Now I know why because every other sign says run; every part of me, the pain in my hand, the pain in his face. That look, the dark, the innocence.
*I tried experimenting with semicolons using the advice provided in the link below.
