Journal Notes
I am looking for el lapiz. The sun has awaken, and gone to sleep, and awakens again, but I can not find it. I feel a slight rage for my thoughts on a page so that I can store these memories away with today’s date, all neat in the corner. One box above this day’s box on the calendar seems less significant than it should. The television was on one week ago, another tragedy. Another “comforting” talk from our leader to follow. My attention rejects it - it’s going to happen again. I know that. Not important, so I might as well  just ignore it. But now, I am in a land where his rule is irrelevant and his words I can not hear, just like all of my friends and family back in our own land. The people here are different. They seem grateful and it’s as if I exited my true life for one week, yet it dosen’t like me gone. Back in that life is some friendships, good and bad, my relatives, and my slowly fading beloved grandmother. The clock hasn’t run out yet, and we still have some time. There is hope.

My family is my comforter, and they are with me. A comforter, like a blanket. My blanket has holes in it this morning from bullets shot from the life I tried to escape. My blanket is not bullet-proof, and those bullets travel at the speed of electricity through telephone lines impaling a heart - the one that made mine begin beating. They have no intention of bruising, and so they are shot through clouds. This message was delivered to her, his other half. I am in a land where the sun shines and it does not dim, unless that is for a short rain. It doesn't stop shining for a telephone call that would shatter a heart. You would think that these kinds of things do not happen in a place so happy, such as this. Ring, ring, ring. It catches us off guard, and the noise is coming from the phone. The phone has a label: “To call the US, dial +1 first • Charges applied - $1.30 / minute.” My father picks it up. A gasp comes from my his mouth. “Oh my gosh, when?” he replies to the person on the other end. My mother is doing her makeup in the washroom. I glance at my brother, wondering what could possibly be going on. The last thing we would expect was a interruption on our perfect getaway. The tension in the room rises as my dad calls for my mother. In urgency, my mother reaches her hand out and catches it out of my dad’s hands like it was a sacred vase falling. My father’s voice crumbles, beginning to seem sorrowful, and the feeling of cold metal when touched is produced in my father’s eyes as he glares at us, alerting of what he just heard. After that cold metal is touched, it sends chills down your spine. It is well over ninety degrees outside but in this concealed room, with pure white pillows and a shiny floor, the cold in the air is passing out goosebumps. Without words, the message is received that something horrible has happened. It is only confirmed when the floor becomes able to give a bad hug, yet my mother embraces it, still holding the phone up to the side of her being. There is only one possible reason that we can think of, and it is that of a timeline ending, a book closing. The last sentence of this book is complete with an exhale. And so it begins that my blanket is broken now, but that is okay. Water needs to be cleaned off the floor. There is wetness under my feet.


The floor is slippery, just like talking about it what happened now. For once in my life I realize what it feels like to lose someone because I have a heavy heart for someone else’s loss. Why had I not felt this before, when he was on TV and there were real bullets flying? Why did my pencil not take note of my grandmother? I had a lesson to learn, but as the sunlight murders the darkness of night, as the break of day is upon us, it is also so with the writing of another story. This story is different. This story is the sunlight, and as one blessing exited out the door, just as I did in my one life, another enters. Or maybe now, I just take note.