text: Stranded The sun is aggressively melting all that is around this ashen landscape which makes my bed today. A breeze blows through the ragged trees and dry twigs shoot from the ground bending to and fro. I’m all alone. Afraid of what may happen in the next hours I decide to hum to myself so I don’t fall asleep and miss an opportunity to be found. Instead of a warm soft bed to rest after the fight, I lay in the hard rocky dirt with little vegetation to shade me from this torturing sun. I’m not sure how I got here and I don’t know if I’ll see another day. With the remaining bit of strength available to me, I am writing a short note to whoever finds me or to my future self. An attempt to collect my carelessly thrown schoolbag has allowed me the opportunity to find a sheet of paper which I ripped out from my notebooks and a pen I had loosely left hanging on one of the inside pockets. I now am able to keep myself calm by scribbling these notes and waiting, wishing that I was sitting in cool café sipping fragrant coffee with friends. Except at the moment a bit of water may be a better choice to cool my parched lips and broken body. If I could go back to yesterday, what would I have done differently? What else would I do if I could have a tomorrow? By thinking about tomorrow, I hope I could stay awake. If tomorrow comes I have to remember to stay away from trouble. Never should there come a time where in trying to be polite to someone, I avoid running away. In trying to be polite to someone, I enter a dark place that I can’t come out of. Sometimes our capturers wear a warm smile, yet they really have dark intentions. We may know someone but that doesn’t mean they are our friends. It is important to be happy and meet as many interesting people as possible in fact. We should embrace opportunities to laugh and dance, love and be loved because in the act of feeling, the vibrancy of the moment creates the person we would want to be. Though I have attempted to live life well and take opportunities that came my way, there was and will always be some form of regret. Something that could have been done better or shouldn’t have lost so soon. That’s ok, the important thing is that time wasn’t wasted. Love is real, don’t lose heart, don’t give up. Have courage, keep focused, never look back. If I make it out of this hopelessness I hope I never let the memory of this time effect the potential for my future. It’s often said that we should study the past to avoid future error. Right? Unfortunately, mistakes will still be made. We may have all the answers, but our instincts could still lead us into falling into destructive patterns within complicated scenarios over and over. The pain I feel right now is so great I don’t know if I could hold on. How could I be writing about a future when there seems to be little hope of being discovered. All I want to do is remind myself not to take for granted all that I have had. My studies, my family, my goals. These things are important. Will I ever have a chance to a future? I could really use an angel right now but all I see is an empty sky. With little to do I start remembering a story from a children’s book I use to read quite often when I was getting ready for bed. The story takes place in a military hospital after the second world war. In this hospital at the end of each day, the nurses would distribute medicine to the many patients, and serve the last tea throughout the wards. At that time a silence filled the hallways and rooms. In that silence the patients that were able to fall asleep did, but the others who may have suffered discomfort would only dream of a restful slumber because their discomfort was so extreme these men and women would lie in wait as I do now. In that silence a man walked through the hospital unseen by security guards or nurses. As the story goes, if a patient had their hand raised high and their heart was pure, a man some believed him to be an angel, would ask the patient to rise and walk out with him enabling the patient to be rid of their pain forever. There was a sense of hope in this belief for the patients. They believed this angel opened the door to the gates of heaven and each person that walked with this man, who was more of a shadow than a human, would have eternal peace. I could never understand why this story was included within a bedtime story book. Many years now have passed since I held that old heavy volume of stories in my hands. There are many people that believe in reincarnation. Our bodies die but our souls continue. If my soul continues when I die, I hope my soul will remember that I tried to be good. If in a future life if I’m a boy or girl, wealthy or poor, I have to remember to always be wise to the world we see on our daily path. It is important to remember that the eyes of a person do not reflect their true character. Some may argue it is their mouth. Be careful. No matter what reality awaits us our soul will imprint the experience to its essence. Though time changes many superficial and materialistic elements in our lives, I must remember that a wrong decision will always be wrong, and once that decision is made there is little chance of turning back. The right path if taken will promise you a tomorrow. Confined to this place, this dirt floor of stone and dry bush, I feel tired. I imagine insects starting to eat away at my skin though I can’t tell for sure because my body is so numb with pain that I can’t feel myself trying to wiggle my toes. I lay here in wait and hope that my memories of this lifetime will shine on in the next existence. If there is one memory I’d make sure to never forget and hope it remains instilled in the deepest core of my essence, it would be to never trust the cute boy with the ketchup stained teeth. He is my end.