The girl on gravel mountain ~Part One~

A/N: I have no idea what this is. It started out as experimentation before metamorphosing into ... a narrative poem, I guess; but it got out of hand and ended up being longer than I expected--not to mention that I grew curious about the girl and decided to keep up with her story. So yes, this poem will be in parts. Ripitupripitup. ~P

~*~

|Part One|
On Gravel Mountain.

She's trying to disappear; you can see it in the way
her nose scrunches up, a pale teardrop
settling into the ravines that etch themselves 
on her forehead. 
Her eyes are shut, blinds down: pale, flimsy,
parchment membrane. She thinks that if you close your eyes
for long enough, the world will close its eyes to you, too. 
The reasoning is as thus, that it's,
'A strange kind of invisibility, except you're never really invisible.'
(She's disillusioned, the poor thing, 
but no one will tell her so. Not one single person, 
no  sneaker-clad, jumper-wearing, carbon-based life-form
would deign to speak to her. She tries 
to make herself feel better, by imagining
that they're all afraid of what her eyes might say to them; whether they'll speak
beseechingly or whether the sheer clash of colour within her irises
would be enough to frighten them.)

When she opens her eyes, they are a normal, dull brown.
irises like bicycle spokes, gnashing against one another. 
The teardrop falls to its original place, on the middle of a face 
that is all granite and cardboard boxes,
and impeccably written aloofness: Verdana, font size 12. 
She watches the sneaker-clad, jumper-wearing, carbon-based life-forms
filtering into the school grounds. Her breath 
catches in her throat, just from the sheer sight
of the crowd and the crowding
and the suffocation. 

She stands all alone on gravel mountain, the jungle gym—
a corpse of tangled metallic arms and legs—gleams
in the paleness of a sun that is watery against dismal, slate-eyed skies. 

Her feet gently rub against chalky mazes on the ground,
scrawled against the grey, a thousand grainy specks of dust 
that ineptness and clumsy fingers scratch against caked earth.
Her shoes are scuffed where they meet the gravel, and she marvels at the way
chalk breathes. 
Sometimes, it's real-er than people. 
People make the playground asphyxiating. Or at least, 
that's the word Oxford dictionary would choose for the situation.
The girl lets the thought trail past her lips, just to see what it tastes like;
It is sweet, like chalk-dust and cinnamon 
against dry, paved, cracked earth.
Her eyes close. The blinds drop down. And she says the word until it grows louder, 
'Asphyxiating. People. 
Asphyxiating. Crowds. 
Asphyxiating. Asphyxiating. Asphyxiating!'
A sharp intake of breath, a scuffed-up shoe kicking at chalk-clouds; 
a stream of furious thought.
She hopes no one hears her. She hopes no one hears her. 
She hopes no one hears--
'Why're you here all alone?'

There is a boy, with tarmac hair, and a face like washed-out milk. He has a teardrop nose like her,
and his forehead is all scrunched up, like crushed gravelly bits. 
He is thinking. 
That much is obvious. 
And he is thinking hard. 

There is a ball hiding in the crook of his arm. He holds it like it's made of glass, like it's 
the most precious thing in the whole wide world. And he eyes  the girl
strangely. It is not a hostile stare, or an annoyed stare. 
The girl thinks the boy merely looks curious. 
She does not speak to him, though she returns his stare. Hard, piercing, Verdana font-size 12 eyes drill through his skull; but he looks back
unnerved, gaze steady, and he plops down on the ground. 

'Did you draw all this?' he asks, tracing a pallid finger against the chalky granite.
The girl nods stiffly. 'Yes.'
She is surprised when his face switches to an expression of awe, a smile stretching out 
like cheerful rain clouds across a countenance that is young, and innocent, and sincere.
'You draw jus' like my mum--but she's a tiny bit better, y'know.' The boy cocks his head to the side as he surveys her. 'Do you want to be an artist when you grow up?' 
'I dunno,' she says, because she honestly doesn't care. She tells the boy 
she is content with just watching the crows as she draws, because she thinks 
they look like black knives, or typewritten letters, 
carving and clacking against the sky. She says she'd 
like to do that when she's older, if that makes sense. 
The boy responds earnestly that it does, fingers still gripping tightly
onto his football, as if it would try to fly away if he let go. 

'What do you want to do?' the girl asks the boy. And he tells her that he 
wants to play football and make friends. 
'With me?' the girl says, eyes widening, bicycle-spokes
gnashing in her irises. 
'Yeah, with you,' the boy confirms. 'You look pretty lonely up here.' 
'I'm not--not really; but I'd like to be your friend. That is ... if I don't have to go down there.' 
She nods at the schoolground, and the boy turns to see what she sees:
sneaker-clad, jumper-wearing, carbon-based life-forms
cascading around like frenetic ants, or bees, or anything that moves as fast as they do.
'What's wrong with going down there?' The girl shakes her head sadly. He doesn't understand.
'It's asphyxiating down there,' she explains. 'And everybody scares me. Not to mention that 
no one's talked to me, or come up here since school started.'
'Well, we don't need to go down there for us to be friends, I guess. Do you mind if the ball lands on your chalk-drawings?'
The girl doesn't, and she says so. The boy grins again. She notices 
that his eyes have bicycle-spokes within them, too, and she asks him how he got those. 
But he's already thrown the ball her way, as if it doesn't matter whether it's made of glass, or if it breaks. 
'Catch!'

Their laughter ripples through the stony air on gravel mountain, the jungle gym gleaming
like a jigsaw of firm planes and precision—metallic smiles 
in the glare of a sun that is warm;
pale heat burning holes into a beaming sky.

~