Melting Hearts | ✓

c h i l l s ║ix

"It's okay, " Macy said, "My younger sister got pregnant a few weeks ago. She's only fourteen."

My heart almost stopped. Why hadn't Macy talked to me about it? Now that I really thought about it, I guess I'd been pretty distant and a little too boy-obsessed. I felt bad though, that she thought she couldn't tell me.

Macy gave me a sad look and then looked away.

"This is...surprising." Quinn breathed, "That we all have some pretty bad stuff--I mean."

Everyone looked at me, as if on cue. I hadn't said a word yet and I knew I needed to. I wanted so badly to mumble "my dog is really old and might die soon" or maybe "I lost my best pair of socks". I wished those were the kinds of problems I had, I knew we all did.

A barrier between the words and them snapped all of a sudden, letting everything just pour out.

"My mother hates me, she hates my name, she hates my father and she works too much. She calls me Arianna and complains that my father named me so stupidly. I haven't seen my father in forever and sometimes I worry that he's not even alive. It's not like my mother would ever tell me or--"

Macy began patting my back and it took me a moment to realize I was crying. It wasn't the crying I usually did, the soft little whimper, it was the loud, ugly, hurt crying that I'd never been able to do. With every throaty huff and cry, I felt everything just wash away. I breathed slower now, letting myself stop.

"Okay guys", Quinn nodded happily, a tear trickling down her face, "Let's write some really great poems."

                                                                             ♦  ♦  ♦

The frigid wind blows.

Snowflakes settle on my nose.

I never go in. 

Macy's poem was amazing.

"I love how even though it's a haiku, which usually don't rhyme, you made it a little." Quinn said what we were all thinking. We'd all finished our poems and now were reading them, though my mind still wondered where on earth Oliver was. I didn't want to just up and leave, we were busy, but I was getting worried. 

Tyler had put away his music and joined us on the floor, sad to have made no progress at all. I kept glancing down at my poem, I wasn't sure if I liked it or not. Abigail had already read hers, which was a neat rhyme about footprints and now, after Macy's haiku, I couldn't begin to compare to them.

"Okay, my turn." Quinn said and I was so glad too, I still wasn't ready to read.

The way the sun goes down early,

The way the snows come’s the same, yearly.

 

The lights, gifts and cheer.

All of my family, right here.

 

I never want the cold air to leave me,

Never want the snowflakes to flee.

 

 But as much as the snow makes me smile,

Its’ you I’d like to stay awhile.

It seemed like everyone in the room, including me, was "awwing". It really was a cute poem, they all had been. My mind strained to remember if Mr. Wades had said they needed to be happy, but I couldn't recall him saying that.