Orchid Summers (Background Story)

She saw his face before they carried him away on a stretcher. The wind was strong that day, and a corner of the white cloth covering his lifeless body had flapped upwards.

Her mother had tried to pull her away, but it was a split moment too late.

Orchid recognized who he was.

She'd seen him walking around aimlessly the blocks where she lived, and she knew that he had no family, no home to go back to.

Yet, strangely enough, the blood and gore didn't scare her as much as it should have had.

It was the empty, hollow look in that man's eyes.

That scared her.

The realization that he'd be forgotten the very minute his body burned to ashes. That the world was going to continue like the death of one sad, lonely man didn't exist at all.

"I don't want everyone to forget me when I die," she'd muttered tearfully to her mother afterward.

It was selfish, she knew, to care only about herself instead of the millions of other sad, lonely people who died everyday.

But Orchid wasn't perfect. And the look in that man's eyes continued to haunt her, a bitter memory created by wind and chance.

Remember To Forget (Poem)

Remember to forget, love
Those memories are like broken glass shards
I could bleed my hands crimson red
But they’ll never bring me back to the past
(The present is an impenetrable barrier)

One day, I'll stop running away
One day, I'll stop long enough to learn
How to smile once more.

For now, love,
Remember to forget.

Silence (Poem)

I'm a disconnected, tangled mass of thoughts
with no way of unravelling them.

I tried burying them in ink,
but the words only bled spiraling graffiti
twisting round and round
until the hole in the paper matched my heart

I tried searching for suitable reasons,
but answers can never excuse facts
disappointment dragged down every letter
as the line between my memory and reality blurred.

You aren't who you said you were.
(it is difficult when you discover
you've been living in your imagination all along)

So silence is my new best friend,
there are far too many words that should never have escaped my fingers,
for the truth has left its bitter taste on my tongue,
a reminder of illusions and facades.

Repeat (Poem)

Life's like a record rewound over and over again,
And at the end of the day,
It's always the same sad story.

Start;

The world seemed like such a beautiful place,
Through rose-tinted glasses and a child's innocence,
And as rainbows soaked into everything I saw
I believed that evil and good was like black and white,
Easy to differentiate, easy to categorize

(I never wondered about the grey)

Play;

Reality slowly killed off the child in me,
As happiness turns fickle,
Hopping from one thing to the next
It never stayed at the same place for too long

I tried to look for it in things and 'love',
But the fireworks always fade in the end
And I'm left staring at the empty sky in disillusionment
Floating aimlessly on the currents once more.

(I never knew I was searching in the wrong places)

Stop;

I want to pull out the fingers on the clock
And demand for time's explanation
Twenty-four hours will never cover
All the mistakes I've made in life.

Rewind;

Every morning, I wake up,
Only to feel like it's the same day on repeat.
I'm growing backwards, falling back to sixteen
Sometimes, I question my sanity.

(Irony must be playing a big joke on me)

Because life's like a record rewound over and over again,
And at the end of the day,
It's always the same sad story.

Distance (Poem)

I dance on top of thin telephone wires,
Teetering on them like a tightrope walker
Just so I can hear your voice magnified
A thousand times over the mindless static.

And every day, I pack a hundred and one words
Into a battered suitcase sent through electric pulses
Hoping you'd receive at least the more important ones
Like 'miss', 'love' and 'remember not to forget me'

We are ten thousand miles and a heartbeat apart,
But when I close my eyes and speak to you,
I can almost feel you here beside me.

And I would run across those telephone wires
If it'd bring me to where you are.