4/2003 There is a blade of grass so purely green, so smooth that it reflects the sunlight off its silky threads. I hold it firmly between my thumb and index finger and it sways in the direction of the breeze. Close my eyes and stroke it but can barely feel its presence with my nerves, for it is too small, too unaffecting to provoke change through even a slight sensation from skin to brain. I smell its perfume. Fresh. New. An identical scent to that which brushes my hair and eyelashes as delicately as how one may dream a mother’s touch. This blade I hold firmly with the pads of my fingertips, stroke it with my world. I watch it fade under my pressure, warm gradient to sheer darkness, a jungle green that looks blackish and outdated; so old, so weak, so helpless. It sits limply in my hand and I cry for it and grip it harder, desperate to pulse my energy through its silent form. I pull it toward the sky but it falls over and gasps for air as it lies, purple and shriveled and dry. My skin has too quickly absorbed all the water that the blade ever drank, and now the sun beats much too hard for it to stay alive. Goodbye stupid blade of grass that cannot even take another breath of afternoon air. I’ll throw you among your brothers and sisters again.   Welcome Random Comments number One, Two and Three. Sweet symphony of life, please take my body and toss it plainly into the coarse and rapid waves. I cannot sing without my chamber music, you see. I cannot breathe without my oxygen. Girls that jump in air and sing and dance and laugh, their voices chat above the monotone hum of breeze and swim through the daily current. How far they travel with eyes so pure and joyous, how long their wavelengths of song. How they’d die without each other to harmonize with their own endless melody, tunes that, when their bodies waste away and become one with the earth again, will join the fearless orchestra, performing undaunted marks of sound. How we have so many signs that make us turn and stop and go that we think we look between the jail bars and see our freedom. And yet we haven’t even met the other side, nor received the unabridged version of Big Earth. When will the box be destroyed? When will experience be limitless? When will this blade of grass look different from the others before it is tortured and asphyxiated? There is a small stone, triangular, so gray and dark and sharp and rough to feel. I hold it in the palm of my hand and wrap my fingers around it, tighter and tighter until I am a fist that mirrors strength. I can feel it dig into my flesh as I tighten my grip, muscles screaming, nails biting my pure Caucasian skin. I feel the heat flush between my knuckles and I let go with a wild grunt. My hand is motionless, glistening with sweat; pure sweat, reminding me of my exhaustion. How I gaze at it shimmering so innocently while my hand burns crimson, finished. Terminated. How in the center of my palm lies such a perfect imprint of the rock I cannot change.