Where I went wrong//Odell(zoe)

Tell us a story, Odell.

I'm the best at stories. Not telling them - that's Jordan, she's magnificent and she makes invisible words come to life and paints them out for us all to see. But I'm the best at picking them, hearing them, reading them off paper. I read them out loud, and fall in quietly. My friends hover around the tower, spring sunlight streaming in from the open windows to warm my skin and light up my tower. "Good morning!" I sing, springing from the floor to perch my elbows on the windowsill and look out across the whole orchard as it blooms into the day. My goodness, what a wonderful sight. "Once upon a time" I begin, and my friends hover around my head and perch themselves in position, ready to hear my tale. My fingers fiddle with objects on the wooden surface: a thimble, a hair ribbon, three pegs and a packet of seeds. Go on, go on! they chant, almost falling out of place with excitement. Patience is something they lack and I excel at.

So I race to my books, lining the walls of my tower, stacked and shelved and piled into my own personal library. With cautious fingers I trace the spines, eyes hungrily searching for a tale to tell. It has to be perfect, one just right for the day and the time and the weather - but most importantly, for my friends. With eyes alight I find it, settling on a spine near the top of my shelves that whispers of adventure. I open up its wonders, pages bursting with stories and promise of entertainment.

And so I begin to read.

"Once upon a time - and imagine if you can, a steep sided valley cluttered with giant, spiky green pine trees and thick, green grass that reaches to the top of your socks so that when you run, you have to bring your knees up high, like running through water..." The room comes to life, the floor turning from a dark grey to green, blades of grass sprouting from the cracks in the tiles and flooding the whole room until I'm surrounded by grass. My friends laugh giddily with delight, swarming around me in a chorus of giggles. "...wildflowers spread their sweet heady perfume along the gentle breezes and bees hum musically to themselves as they cheerily collect flower pollen." The flowers began to sprout, too - though this time along the walls in pinks and blues and purples, the colours of sunsets and pretty dresses (two of my favourite things). We sing along to the bees, watching them hop from flower to flower along with my friends.

I continue onwards, transforming my tower into another word. "The children would always play in the gentle, rolling meadows. With wide brimmed hats and skin slippery with sun block, they chittered and chattered like sparrows, as they frolicked in their favourite spot. Now, their favourite spot is very important to this story because in this particular spot is a large, long, scaly rock that looks amazingly similar to a-"

A knock from below causes a pause in my words and the world I was creating to creep back into the walls, vanishing from view in the blink of an eye. Quick, hide! my friends squeal, and I drop the book to the floor in a surprised fluster of limbs. With a squeak, I run to the top of the stairs and listen, ever so cautiously, through the door to find the source of the knocking. "Odell?" a voice calls, causing my spine to stiffen. "It's Branden - could I possibly make use of some of your reading materials?"

I turn to my friends, who peep from behind my belongings with wondrous, orb-like eyes. Friend or foe? one of them - a braver one - speaks up with a gentle tone that dances across the room. "Friend" I decide quietly, peering through a crack in the wooden door. "Everybody here is a friend."

I open the door to greet him with a smile, turning almost immediately on my heels to retrace my steps, bare feet pattering though my room, the stone floors cool underneath my soles. It was true in saying that everybody at Julia is a friend, for they took me in and share everything they have with me. And in turn, I think, I need to start doing the same. Nobody has ever come up here but me, save for the occasional meal-deliverer on nights when the sun stays high in the sky well past the afternoon hours in the summer months. And I'd like to change that, starting today.

I've never been one to communicate with a lot of words (there were times when I first arrived that I never uttered a sound apart from a surprised squeak or content hum.) "Help yourself," I offer, twirling in the light from the glassless window, my words crafted with a mysteriously playful tone. "What's mine is yours, and yours is mine."

in the morning when i wake and the sun is coming through
you fill my lungs with sweetness & you fill my head with you
can i take it to a morning where the fields are painted gold
and the trees are filled with memories
of the feelings never told?