This is the Title to a Cliched Story

“Write a story,” they had said, “on something that rings true to you.” Yet what if there was nothing there, no abstract sun that “beamed and shone”, no broken glass wedged in my heart? What if there was no one place that ever meant something to me, if everything I’d ever seen falls point blank into cliché?

I rolled my eyes and almost flinched at the face that stared at me. It glowed and paled, and battered through the midnight dark with fragile force. A subtle groan and I was up, scowling at the softest grass that brushed the creases of my skin; then glancing back with almost smiles as moments rained back through my head. This open field, of nothing but and trees huddled and standing watch… This was called my “special place” -- yet even now my heart and nerves never snatched and bit my ribs, the starving workers of my mind never slumped into relief. No, this could be my ‘special place’, but all it ever was to me was a place of solitude: and even if it offered little but the hand of sanity… I’d always been okay with that. I’d be okay with anything.

Almost anything.

Minutes crammed into the seconds; darkness held the knob of clarity. Shy lines sharpened, colours quickened: the same slight square repeated again to make a single, flattened quilt. Weeds were peeking through the grass, blushing shades of white decay. The muddy blades were glaring, taunting me and shooting blind for where they were -- Where were they? Did they remember? Inscribed on stalks, they’d always – always… - held the questions never answered. The forest paint the pixies swabbed upon their leaves evidently did nothing to stifle all their piercing cries. They still held the world’s secrets. They held and whispered all the answers, if only we could learn to hear them.

My greying scarf whipped across and smothered my entire world. A howl and whistle of the wind, and words were swinging back to me. Fragments of the conversations shivered, buried, under ice, reaching up backwards towards me. Air slapped me repeatedly, but where was that awakened feeling? Thunder booms applaud my youth; lightening shards captured the picture. Strands of melted stars poured down, stealing thoughts and hurt and scars and flushing them into the ground. Tender beatings to my face so no one else would have to do it. Salt and bitter squirmed their way towards my lips and scraped my tongue, rain-kissing and filling me with nothing but the taste of now. My heart rattled constantly, the backbone of this orchestra. Just close my eyes and I would swear the lonely voices joined in too.

This melody of them and I – perhaps I was a part of something – rippled through the frigid air. A single twirl and every leaf shrieked a note to heart’s content. The shadows casted from the trees consumed the moon and briskly bloated, caving in onto this field, this massive patch of grass and nicotine; and amidst the crowds of nature’s police, the great oak tree still stood so tall, patronising and absorbing every word we’d ever lost. A timid hand traced its laugh lines, and its scars – engraved love letters and dreams. I closed my eyes and leaned on it, and there between caressing bark and taking in the honey dew… I swear I caught the scent of home and begging, raging candlelight.

Back in the field I sighed and scrambled desperately for the words, the words to whisper in the air so everything would feel surreal; but every breath I took for captive never made it out alive. No matter. Up I went, towards the moon, reaching for those stupid stars like a slave of just clichés. Like a child that still believed in wishing upon shiny stars: floating, breaking rocks in space that never cared for what you said.

“Something that is true to me,” I’d muttered, bitter, crazy, and confused.
“Something real, without clichés…” I’d grind my teeth and scrawl it out.
“Something I could really believe.” Another word, another phrase.
“Something there. A piece of life.”

And then I sat and wrote this story.