This is a short story I wrote. The characters are entirely of my own imagination. The idea behind the story is one I will leave up to yourselves, and you can determine for yourselves what you think the outcome or underlying messages are.

That being said, I'd like to remind you that this is a PG-13 story. It does deal with some more mature themes, but there are no graphic descriptions, no use of profanity, and there are no sexual references.

Read on!

Sands Of The Moon- July 2005

On occassion she likes to write letters to herself about love. No one else cares to tell her how they like how she smiles just so, how her eyes twinkle a little, how when the light is warm, her skin seems to glow and her hair is perfect. She writes these things to herself, because she thinks she's pretty when she looks in the mirror, and it makes no difference to her what the boys next door think. She's a love child and she's in love, but she doesn't feel loved all the time.

Sometimes at night she watches the stars and wonders how fast they're moving. She imagines that she is a space cadet, and she can hold onto the tail of a comet and soar free through the darkness. She feels safe in her imagination, and so when she falls asleep in the sands of the moon, she's warm and doesn't worry about the screams in the next room over.

She fills her canvases with blues and purples. She draws her inspiration from the bruises on her arms, back and face. She closes her eyes and she makes her stroke, thinking about how she felt the second before the impact. They're smooth, and calm. The colours blend easily, because in her mind she thinks she's okay. She touches her heart once in a while and feels the way it barely beats, but she thinks that's the way it's supposed to be. She leaves her fingertips there for a moment, and wonders why it skips sometimes. The smile she wears is eerie, but they accept her for what she is, and she eats her lunch alone, and she never has a partner, and she doesn't like to go outside very much because sometimes the sun hurts her eyes, and everyone can see her.

The boy is odd in his own way, but she watches him consistently through her glasses that are too big for her head, and not strong enough for her to see much. He doesn't smile often, and his hair is always in his eyes. He doesn't have a name and she doesn't care because he's beautiful and one day he will be hers. He sits alone and plays his guitar and sometimes he scratches things into his arms. She thinks she can relate when she see the way she has a ladder of scars up her inner thighs and on the inside of her arms, and she wonders if they bleed the same way.

They catch her staring at him sometimes and they tease. They believe the two of them should be together because they seem to be subhuman. She takes this as a compliment, and wonders if he feels the same way. He refuses to meet her eyes, but she imagines that he might be peeking at her through his hair and she goes to sleep at night imagining that she might brush it out of his face and kiss him on the forehead, and he'll tell her they were right and they'll be happy.

He stopped coming to school and his name was in the paper. She cut out the articles and his pictures because it was all she had of him other than her memory and her fantasies. She needed something material, and so she cut away the obituary and she smiled at the thought of him being far, far away, out in space, away from earth, away from her. She felt sad at the same time, missing the way he would sit in the corner opposite her, watching him as she peeked over her balogna sandwich which never tasted quite right and her carton of milk that she never could finish because she didn't like it.

When she went to sleep that night, she imagined that they were space cadets, and that he's hanging on the tail of a comet soaring through the blackness, and he'll pick her up on the way and they'll fall asleep together in the sands of the moon, and they'll be warm, and they won't have to worry about the kids at school because they'll be sleeping for the rest of eternity.

wow that was so powerful and so sad and absolutly brilliant. Thanks for sharing.

Anneka

You're welcome, and thank you :)

That was very very good.
The way things unravel,
and you get to see more and more of this girls life.
The things she has to go through,
the things she thinks and feels...it all adds up to something extremly powerful.

It almost made me cry....especially the part about the dream of being free and having no worries. About finally having someone, in a place were nobody can hurt her and him.
Absolutly stunning!

I have my own ideas about the hidden messages...but I will keep them to myself cause I don't want to ruin it for anybody else. Everyone has the right to see in it what they want to see in it.

Love it very much!