Jori Collections: 2017-2021

(7.4.17) Saving Jade West - T/M, 7.4k [A*]

[It started with a kite and how it was eventually fixed and understood.]

"Oh, oh, oh!
Let's go fly a kite
Up to the highest height!
Let's go fly a kite and send it soaring
Up through the atmosphere
Up where the air is clear
Oh, let's go fly a kite..."

-Richard & Robert Sherman

— — — —

My eyes struggle to properly shut for the night, red blaring numbers searing across my thoughts. 'Eleven-thirty two,' they dully recall, my legs shifting to a cooler spot under the sheets. I sigh as my head adjusts with my arm under the pillow, my right hanging down to grasp the thin linens that covers the mattress. 'You really need to go to sleep,' the voice inside my head banters, forcing my eyes closed again - they merely blink back open.

There's too much that buzzes throughout my skull, and it has become irritating. Nothing in the world would satisfy me more to just sleep these sullen thoughts and look over them in my dreams. I need to sleep and graduation is tomorrow.

Still, strong memories plague my thoughts and I can't shake them off to go to sleep...

Goose bumps rapidly crawl along my skin as I shudder, my free hand - which isn't under a pillow and a pound or two, however heavy my noggin is - tugs the covers to my shoulders. For what it was worth, I'm a tad bit warmer. Just a tad though. And as the sheets begin to settle against my bare arms, my head feels like a hive once more, diving me back into my subconscious.

It's strange, I find, how the strongest, most sturdiest people you meet always have deep, psychological scars that run through their hard shell. When I was little, about four or so, I would just gaze at the screen and find Aurora, Snow White and all the other princesses to be just...perfect. No problems, no issues, though they didn't do shit during the movie besides wait around for the prince. And the princes, my lord, always were the strongest of them all and the perfect ones to save the girl. Everything was just hunky-dory, wasn't it then? You know, when I was four.

At the same time, or when the illuminated pictures didn't stamp themselves in my soft, new skull of mine, my dad always stood strong. He's always been a bigger man. Not overweight, mind you, but definitely not one to wear skinny jeans. Anyway, that's beside the point, isn't it? He, too, carved his own image in my mind. His cheerful smile and hearty laughter had always warmed the whole family. It was perfect then; there were no cracks in the mirrors or shatters of masks.

Though, things did change when I began to file into buses and seat myself in classrooms. Now, it was subtle, but enough to catch my small span of attention as a child. Kids could be jerks and teachers strict. It wasn't like a fairy tale or just a small girl's wide appreciation for the man who called himself 'her father.' Though, as always, I smiled and gave a cheery voice just as the princesses had. Now, I make it sound as though I didn't understand that the whole situation Snow White and the others weren't perfect, because I did, though the characters were. No wrinkles on their skin, just a smooth, animated color. No sweat and grime on their hands after working on various chores, just clean, cartoon-hands.

Middle school came and went, nothing much to really say other than my eyes had crept open from their 'rose-colored glasses faze,' though not all the way. Girls gossiped to diminish any competition while boys pushed and shoved to dictate their own authority as 'men.' The sky still was a bright blue and the sun was still up even on rainy days. I didn't understand why the girl in the corner scowled at her luck with black everything as clothing or why the boy hiding in the bathroom refused to believe that the 8th grader on the field was 'just being rough.' I just couldn't comprehend any of that as I sat with a loving family in a beautiful house, the princesses subconsciously cleaning the negative thoughts away, not allowing them through.