100 Words

On Honesty

Without thinking about it, I used to assume - subconsciously, I suppose - that honesty went without saying. I believed I was honest in everyday life unless I intentionally meant to be otherwise.

However, recently I’ve realized just how hard it is to be honest - with myself, or with anyone. As a result, I attempt to consciously think about my thoughts before releasing them to vocal fruition.

Because, without reevaluating every premeditated thought I own, how can I be sure they aren’t medieval comprehensions that have somehow weaseled their way through to modernity, contradicting everything I’ve come to believe as true since?

The Beautiful Expat

Where I come from, beautiful people are happy. In my culture, depth and kindness mean beauty. The way I see it, happy people are beautiful and that happiness is defined by depth and kindness.

Here, everything is backwards.

This place has a concept of beauty so aesthetically concentrated it’s poisonous. Even those who fit the mold are shamed away from happiness under the delusion that beauty and depth should be strangers - distant cousins, at best.

It’s difficult for a beautiful soul to find themselves under these conditions as with true beauty and absolute happiness, one cannot exist without the other.

The Girl in the Yellow Hat (Part Three)

With each week of class that came and went, I became increasingly aware of the girl who always wore that yellow hat. 

She seemed to have a melancholic mass affixed towards her; as if with each begrudging step she was treading against a current, barely managing to keep her head above water.

Fighting with herself for the strength to simply walk from the doorway to an open seat, I wondered how she managed to justify coercing herself out of bed for a class generally thought to be trivial. 

And that is when I decided I needed to talk to her.

The Girl in the Yellow Hat (Part Two)

To my absolute intrigue, she appeared a few minutes late for class, again choosing to keep the yellow hat on her head. 

Was it warmth? A sense of security? Some people have teddy bears, and baby blankets, and trinkets, and comfort food, but this girl had her yellow hat, I reasoned. However, in a eureka moment I found that conclusion to be unfulfilled. 

I realized it wasn’t the hat itself that lead me to unswervingly sense her arrival - although quiet and unspectacular to the unexamined eye - but the thick ora that hovered around her. 

This poor girl was unbelievably sad.

The Girl in the Yellow Hat

The first time I saw her she quietly entered the room just before class began. Her eyes locked to a seat in the corner, where she sat taking off her coat and unpacking her bag. During the lull before the lecturer began, I wondered why she didn’t take off her hat. Of course the explanation could’ve been as simple as a bad hair day, but something instructed me that it was more. Seventy students must have entered the classroom that day, so what was it about this quiet girl in the yellow hat that left such an impression on me?

Pick Me

I paint my nails, they chip the next day. I shave my legs, they stay smooth for about a minute. My hair can’t hold curl, so I leave it in it’s inevitably flat state and when morning comes, you’ll question whether or not I have dreads. 

Now, I know there are other contenders out there who get their nails done every week and a half, a wax every two, who’ve perfected those bouncy curls and who wake up looking just as good as the day before - the bitches. 

Having said that, I want to thank you for picking me anyways.

13A

13A always planned ahead and took pride in her rare interactions with surprise. She’d booked this flight several months in advance and had her gravol by her side to calm her inevitable nerves.

But when the seatbelt sign went on, when the turbulence wouldn’t let up and the flight attendants got that look in their eyes, she immediately catapulted out of her pharmaceutical slumber and was faced with a nasty concentration of panic; the plane was going down.

Amongst her flailing arms and obstreperous outcries, she thought only of her tendency to boast ‘when you plan ahead, nothing goes askew’.

The Line

It’s sometimes difficult to see where the line is until after you’ve crossed it, and that’s why I killed him.

We had a routine. He’d holler all the foul words in the English and sometimes German language, rough me up and leave me in tears only to charmingly and convincingly beg for mercy almost immediately thereafter. 

So, naturally, he thought it was gonna be our regular schtick on that Wednesday night; four-letter words, he’d cross the line, I’d cry, all would be forgiven.

And at first that’s exactly what happened, only this time I beat him to the line.

13B

Amongst the chaos of dozens of people brutally, helplessly and messily pleading against their unfortunate fate sat 13B. Sandwiched between 13A, who had popped one-too-many gravol even before the flight attendant started to show signs of panic and 13C, who didn’t understand the concept of personal space - not before the turbulence and most certainly not after - 13B sat, textbook in lap, seemingly unaffected.

Nobody could have known - or cared, considering the circumstances - that 13B sat squished between the pill-popper and the space-invader repeating the same words in her head; I died waiting for life to begin.

Clouds 8 and 10

I’m told cloud nine is really something. It’s supposedly all-the-rage - the cream of the crop, if you will; both of which certainly make it the best thing since sliced bread. 

But what about clouds eight and ten?

I would expect the residents of cloud eight to be quite restless in the same way that a small child can’t sleep before their first day of school - mystery and excitement, when mixed, create impatience. 

Cloud ten, however, has got to be located somewhere above a rainforest; a dark raincloud never again being able to experience the nirvana of cloud nine.