Three Minute Fiction

Emy hopped from foot to foot, pushing her blue hair back from her pale face. Her anxiety had been building from the minute her hand had slipped, and now she could hardly stand a minute without asking the nurses “Is he ready yet?”

“No, dear,” they would say each time, with a sympathetic smile. But Emy could not be consoled. She was screaming inside, thoughts bouncing wildly off the walls of her mind, and she was sure that it showed in the jittering of her anxious body that wouldn’t let her sit down. She recognized this feeling from before she started therapy. It was heavier than the car she had smashed, more terrifying than any accident...and she couldn’t believe it had come back. It was just an accident, wasn’t it?

She couldn’t stop thinking about Masaki now. Well, she could never stop thinking of him--and of japan. She could imagine it now, him walking her through the green summer gardens, eating homemade miso and sushi with his family, and walking through the bright night streets of Tokyo with wide eyes. Maybe she’d be there soon if she hadn’t ruined everything with a slip of her steering wheel.

Through the corner of her eye, Emy saw a young, blonde nurse enter the room and nod to the others.

“Your patient is ready to visit,” said a brunette nurse, looking towards Emy.

Emy nodded her thanks, biting her lip as she stood up and directed her steps towards the hospital room. It’s okay....it’s okay....

Emy froze upon entering the sterile room. She wasn’t sure if it was okay. Her fingers fidgeted nervously as her eyes swept the darkened bandages that adorned his face and arms, and the large white cut on his leg.

“H-how is he?” she asked quietly, turning her clear blue eyes to toward the tall, male doctor.

“He’s going to be fine,” the brown-eyed man assured her with a warm nod. He pointed to the bandages on Masaki’s face and arms. “Those are only cuts. We’ve stitched them up, so he’ll just need to rest here for the about a day or so, just to let the anesthesia wear off and to rest a bit, and then he’ll be free to go. Allright?”

“All right.” Emy nodded forcefully. But she couldn’t help the overbearing feeling that it was all her fault.

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“You can’t go!” Emy cried. She could feel her voice turning high pitched and frantic, almost a shriek. “It’s not safe!”

Masaki rolled his eyes, pushing his thick black hair away from his face. “It’s fine, Emy. Stop overreacting.” She wasn’t expecting him to leave, but suddenly she saw him standing in the doorway.

“You could control your anxiety, Emy,” he said, looking into her watery blue eyes, “If you could just let it out of your mind, maybe you’d let me back in.”

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Emy opened her eyes to the sulight streaming through her open window. She tried to recall yesterday, and immediately Masaki’s words came back to her. They ran around in her mind with each step, and even as she sat down on her yoga mat. Maybe she could let it go, she thought as she relaxed her body, moving into the first pose. She felt her mind start to work, pushing out more negativity with each movement of her body. Maybe she could.

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Emy looked up, making peace with the heavens as she walked through the tall grasses in the park. She wasn’t sure where her feet would take her...

...but she almost wasn’t suprised when she ended up at Masaki’s door.

Story 1: Anna

Cristina Cass

Anna

            Anna grinned, letting her dirty blonde hair fly behind her through the back of her bicycle helmet. Casually, she lifted her fingers off one of the handlebars to gesture quickly to the other drivers on the road. Turning left.

            She smiled again, humming to herself softly. Turning left meant joining the boulevard. Turning left meant a sunny adventure, travelling with the wind on her back and the entire city beneath the strokes of her pedals.

            She wouldn’t mind getting lost. Amidst the patchwork of open windows studded with yellow cars and painted vans, she thought she wouldn’t mind floating forever in the rippling urban sea. The waves would subside slightly in the calm of red traffic lights, but only for a moment before they broke free, spilling into the road like sunlight warming the city with the hustle and bustle of the day. 

            And indeed, the hustle and bustle of the day would begin for her too, but not on the road. No, for her it would begin when she locked up her little blue bike in the sun and freed her untied hair from the confines of her clean white bike helmet. She would open the glass door of the café and step over the threshold into the dimly lit haven of local art and well-dressed people on their computers, shrouded in the morning aroma of brewing coffee and breakfast pastries. She would smile and politely greet the tired-eyed baristas and the hurried customers in blazers and expensive shoes, who rarely smiled and hardly ever sat down to enjoy their coffees. She thought she much preferred the start of her day to theirs, as she would sit down in the shade of one of the many umbrellas in the outdoor seating. Her day was busy, but it never started until she took a sip of her ice cold mocha and a bite of her delightfully fluffy blueberry muffin and opened up her computer to write.

            As Anna parked her bike on this particular sunny morning, she remembered there was nothing particular about it at all. She remembered Friday’s approaching deadline, but she also remembered the sun that fell lightly on her shoulders like a new silk shirt, and the cool comfort of her summer morning routine. She would have liked a little more allowance in her pocket, but she did not resent her life as she laid her hands on the keys to work on the nearly-finished final draft of her book. And she couldn’t help but feel the little giggly spark that arose in her mind when she thought of her plans for after it was finished. In slightly less than a month, she reminded herself, she would be writing, not with a cup of coffee in sunny Chicago, but with une tasse de café on the banks of the Seine.

            Paris. She relished the thought in her mind, of eating warm croissants with fresh fruit jam for breakfast, of starting new projects with new people, and of seeing the picturesque streets of the charming city from the balcony of her apartment every morning.

            Losing reality in her small reverie as she stood up to adjust the slowly sinking umbrella, she hardly noticed as her backpack swung around, accidentally knocking into the girl behind her.

            “I’m so sorry—“ she started to say, but she had barely caught a glimpse of the other girl’s brown eyes, looking away as Chicago strangers always did, before she realized that she had not been heard.

            “Oh.” She cut herself off softly, pursing her lips uncomfortably as she sat down. In her seat again, she looked back, quietly wondering why she hadn’t called after the girl in her usual friendly fashion, as the stranger faded out of her line of vision, leaving only the image of her monogrammed messenger bag in Anna’s mind as she passed. Anna wasn’t sure why it had caught her eye, but she thought that the blue thread spelling out the name Ivy in neat cursive was quite pretty.

Compassion: A Principle to Keep

     As I wrapped the strips from my worn out t-shirt around his arm, my gaze was drawn to his face. Eyes closed like a sleeping child, shaggy brown hair that hadn't seen a scissor since the sun left the sky. His peaceful smile was a mystery to me, as was the patchwork of tear tracks and grime that covered his face. 

      Dead meat. That had been my first reaction when I found him on the side of the road yesterday. Under the blacked sky, on the ash-gray road, there was nothing I could do for him. Might as well focus on myself.
The dry breeze that cracked the feeble branches and blew my hair must have stirred up the ashes in my heart. I turned around and my gaze came to rest on the boy by the side of the road. His bleeding arm and fading smile seemed to stir up the last human emotion I had left. In ten steps that virtue had led me back to him.

     Compassion was on my mind as I bandaged his wounds and sat quietly, waiting for him to wake up.
As I leaned back against the rough tree bark the holes in my shirt reminded me of that overwhelming connection that kept the gun from my head. Compassion. A principle to live by. 

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For this blog, I decided to focus on the principle of compassion, because I value it highly and I think it is often neglected (by myself too.) I wanted to use fiction do demonstrate this so I've written a Road inspired scenario in which I hope I'd take the actions of my main character. 
In a world where all material things are taken away, I think that compassion would be one of the last principles to keep us alive. 

I'm Thankful for Auguste :)

Every year at my family's Thanksgiving dinner, we go around the table and say what we are thankful for. I've always said the routine things: my family, my friends, my house, etc. When I got this assignment it surprised me because I've never really thought about the individual people I'm thankful for, and because of that I don't think I've really said thanks for everything important to me before.

One of the wonderful friends I am blessed with at Whitney Young is Auguste. We sit next to each other in English class, our birthdays are only a day apart, and we've known each other since sixth grade so I think it's safe to say that I owe a lot of smiles and good moments to her.

One of my favorite things about Auguste is that she's always smiling and laughing. No matter how I feel I know I can always smile, giggle, and make another inside joke when I'm with Auguste. Also, she is very friendly and talkative, which I am thankful for because it means that she can always have a long and funny conversation, even with shy and not-so-talkative people like me. I am very thankful for this because little moments like those can make even your worst day a lot better.

Another awesome thing about Auguste is that she is very creative. She makes beautiful drawings like this one, and even the doodles in the sides of her notebook are always beautiful. Auguste always draws very creative and "luscious" (as she would say) and I am very thankful to know creative and talented people like her. 

Auguste also has a very creative vocabulary and likes to use words like "luscious" and "totes" (or more accurately t0t3s) and I like this because it is very funny and creative and shows that she's not afraid to have fun with her words in a way that's different from everyone else. 

Also on a side note Auguste is one of my favorite people of mine to read my writing because she's also a good writer (we've written a few hilarious stories together lol) and she always makes me feel so happy inside while also giving me good constructive criticism and I'm very thankful for this because I love writing and it makes it all the better when you have great people to share it with. 

All in all, I am very thankful for Auguste and the many moments of laughter and positivity that she has brightened up my life with. Also, she has been a great friend ever since I've known her and our friendship has gone through a lot of changes but it means a lot to me that we are still friends today. I am thankful for her and for this assignment because it made me think about the importance of individuals and small things, and it made me really appreciate all the great people like Auguste that I am so lucky to be around every day. 

I Celebrate Myself

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

I open my mind that you may see with my searching eyes,

Immerse yourself in my being, think only as one with me.

I dip my feet in the weeping river, lapping at my feet;

Oh, laughing, dancing water from whence have you come?

That you may share the very essence of my being,

That the stuff of my frolicking laugh flows in your ripples,

And my smiles in the sunlight that glints off your brooks and streams.

Run, swift feet, to the end of the stream, show me the rock from whence it came,

The core of all souls that births emotion,

From the smiling, laughing waterfall, to the blackened weeping pond.

Oh, core-strengthened rock of fiercely protective love and steadfast standing belief,

Lend me a rough ledge on which to place my feet,

So that I may commence the journey of human success.

Give me a ledge of courage, and strength to push myself up,

But do not deny me the cuts and scrapes, the everyday problems of unsolvable fate,

For their scars will form and give me strength,

The iron core of human soul.

Cling, my travel-worn feet, to the rough bark of that everlasting tree,

The green pine which sprouts life through its extending branches,

Glimmers of soul in every passionate needle,

Waiting to pierce even the stoniest heart.

Bear me, oh life-giving branches,

Become one with the fiber of shared being,

The emotion of mutual nature,

In the purest state of life.

Lead me, oh thoughtful compass, to the north star of my righteous deeds,

To the dark cave of my innermost soul.

I shall not lose myself in its soft moss fabric of darkness,

For I am guided by the torch lit force of my blazing curiosity.

I reach my hands into the red heart of that wild inferno,

And my fingers do not feel pain.

For, though, truth may yet burn,

The rushing waters, tsunamis of newfound being shall fuse with the flame,

As all becomes one on the eternal scale.

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe is a very important figure in American literature, and is famous for his gothic and sometimes disturbing stories. Much of his inspiration from stories of this kind may have come from his childhood and his life in general, where he experienced many traumatic events, such as the death of his parents, foster mother, and other family members.

After Poe's parents died he was adopted by the Allans, who were a wealthier family. After Mrs. Allan died, however, Mr. Allan did not have the best relationship with Poe. He sent Poe to university without enough money, and even left Poe out of his will when he died. These experiences, as well as Poe's poverty later in life may have influenced him to follow the romantic literary trend of rebelling against the aristocracy and traditions and aspects connected to it.

Poe spent a lot of time alone during his life, and also a lot of time in bad living conditions because he was very poor. This may have influenced his writing by influencing the settings and the moods of some of his pieces.

Poe witnessed a lot of deaths in his lifetime, which also may have influenced the morbid nature of his stories. In addition to the deaths of his mother and other family members, Poe also experienced the death of his very dear wife, Virginia Clemm. He also experienced other less-than-satisfactory marriages, which may contribute to the overall dismal mood of his writing.

What is an American?

Around the world, there is a common stereotype of Americans as fat, lazy, stupid and uncultured. Sometimes it may make us ashamed of our country, especially when people say and do things that reinforce the stereotype. But in a country where we have fought against stereotypes for so long, why let our nation be confined by just that? In the spirit of American liberty and opportunity, I prefer to discuss the positive aspects of our nation instead.

Take American culture, for one. Among all of the world's rich and beautiful cultures, American culture is arguably the most beautiful, because it takes all different kinds of people and cultures and combines them into one. Simply by driving through Chicago, you could see a Chinese dim sum restaurant, an Indian sari shop, a Greek orthodox church, and a mexican mural all in the same area. America has always been a thriving center of immigration, and though we may take it for granted, it is more than you can say for most other countries.

I think what it means to be American is largely interpretive because of the many different types of people that are considered to be part of our culture. Each person who lives in our country re-defines the term "American," and becomes another star in the swirling galaxy of our ever-changing culture.