Words to Tie to Bricks (4 page)

Someone’s going to find the crack, so be careful. But cracks are made to be picked at. For someone to come along and uncover your greatness. To pick you up, cuddle you close and tell you
it’s gonna be okay. That’s yellow too.

E
MMA
S
HEVLIN

When I leave

I want to take the words that fueled my soul.

The friendship.

The romance.

The love.

The fiction.

When I leave

I want to hear the melodies that brought me through.

Ecstatic music.

Heartbreak music.

Poignant music.

Our music.

When I leave

I want to be crowded by those who helped me along.

My family.

My friends.

My enemies.

My people.

When I leave

I want to have mountains of memories I have built up in my time.

Recite them.

Share them.

Document them.

Remember them.

When I leave

Don’t ever stop feeling.

Continue to fear.

Continue to conquer.

Continue to love.

Continue to live.

My ending should not prompt yours.

A
MY
C
AMPBELL

N
OBODY IS PERFECT
,
BUT
we will all die trying. I am not perfect, and am able to accept the fact that I never will be. Perfection
has never been something I strived for. Perfect people aren’t real, they aren’t interesting. And I like to believe that my flaws are what make me who I am.

I may not be the prettiest girl you know. My eyes are too far apart, my nose is too wide, my hair goes fuzzy in the rain. I may not be the smartest girl that you know. I am proud to bring home a
report card with mainly B’s, I don’t know the surface area of the earth, I never quite understood long division. I may not be the nicest girl that you know. I say things without
thinking, don’t say thank you often enough, forget the manners my parents spent fifteen years teaching me. I may not be the strongest girl that you know, or the most popular, or the best at
drawing, dancing or science. I will never be a professional footballer, or any footballer for that matter. I can’t describe myself in adjectives, lay out my personality in words and
definitions from the dictionary. Because I am none of them. And at the same time, I am all of them.

I have always used words to express my feelings. I text my friends about my day, share my thoughts on Facebook, jot down my life into the journals I keep. I write songs and stories and poems to
describe the feelings I couldn’t possibly explain. And yet I cannot describe myself using only words. I can only tell you what I am not. Perfect. What am I? Everything else.

I can be loud, I can sing and yell and make crazy noises until my voice is hoarse. And yet at the same time, I can savour the hours alone when I am lost within myself, in a dreamland that only I
have ever been to. I can be happy, I can run around the school singing and laughing and proclaiming that we live in a wonderful world. And I can have days when my eyes are red, and I choke on my
words and I want nothing more than to be hugged and told that everything will be all right. I am ambitious and driven and enthusiastic, but some days my answer to every question is, ‘because
I can’t be bothered.’

I laugh with people, I laugh at people. I talk to people, I talk about people. I dream of the life I would live if I won the Lotto, the things I would say if I was brave enough, the celebrities
I fall in love with. I dream about the perfect world, where there is no war or poverty or death. I am just like any normal teenager. There’s nothing special or extraordinary about me, nothing
that sets me apart from all the rest. I am just me. And I cannot be described in four paragraphs. I’ve known me for sixteen years and I still surprise myself every day.

So if you want words to describe me, try all of them. Because that’s what I try to be. Everything. I want to be friendly and funny and creative and talented and smart and pretty and loyal.
I want to change the world some day, even just a little bit. I want to be the best that I can be at everything I do. But I’ll settle for being me. Because in the end, that’s all I can
be.

O
RLA
M
C
G
OVERN

Silence condenses, squeezes,

Makes the profound more profound.

Its pressure creates complex

Paintings of the simplest sounds.

The silence after a song

Is when the emotion hits,

As everyone hurts and feels and cries

While the silence bends and shifts.

It brings couples close ... closer

And crashes them to an end.

Silence is sad, solemn and lonely

But the lonely make good friends.

C
AELEN
F
ELLER

It’s said that hearts are made of glass,

That glass will shatter in the end.

That someone will make a crack.

And this crack will creep along,

Until the seal on a heart is broken,

Ruby droplets gathering along its length.

But glass can be collected,

Melted down, formed again,

We can always have a new beginning.

Broken glass is a dangerous thing,

Slitting our hands as we mend it.

Opening old wounds to bleed again.

But with you,

I can just sweep the glass away

And forget.

I don’t need my broken heart,

When I have yours.

A
NDREW
D
UFFY

I
DID IT
. T
HE ROOM
filled with the stares of pure disgust and, in some cases, sheer savage animalistic rage. All I could say was
‘what?’ They cried, they screamed the whole house into Hades and blew the neighbourhood to the outer reaches of the galaxy. All I could do was laugh at their whining, their misery at
the smallest of things. An action that in the grand scheme of the universe means absolutely nothing. A decision on a speck of dust on the third rock from the sun in the only solar system known to
possess life.

It means nothing to me; I have done no wrong, committed no offence. Only in the eyes of my peers have I committed an atrocity to rival the worst violations of the Geneva Convention. But I
didn’t know. I simply had no clue, not a notion of what I was condemning myself to.

I am however not sorry. There are no apologies for this. For a man who commits no wrong should not have to apologise.

I genuinely don’t care that it was the last biscuit.

A
NNA
M
ULLIGAN

I really did love you, you know.

Like sunlight on water.

Like a shoelace

Caught

In escalator blades.

Like I was going to stay

For the rest of my life.

I knew your voice

Better than mine –

But it’s time.

Stop calling.