Life Is But A Dream
I play with my battered pencil, being careful not to break it. It is my last one, and breaking it would mean that I have to go and buy a new red pencil. I don't want to brave all of those people in the streets. Watching them from the height of my dirty bedroom window feels safer. They don't see me
Always from afar.
Watching, invisible.
So I play with my battered, red pencil, always careful not to drop it. We are in class, and even though most of them are louder than I am, Iruka could notice. He would make me look even more like the fool people think, and I would play along. That's the way it goes.
Silly fool.
Always acting, always constant.
Red, octagonal.. Roll forward, roll back.
Battered, tired. Tilt forward, tilt back.
I tap the black end of the pencil on the equally tired and dented desk in front of me, my eyes glancing dreamily at the white chalk diagrams that cover the blackboard behind Iruka's desk, and then at the white framed window. The paint's peeling, but no one's really going to be bothered about it anyway. What's more interesting however, is the blue escape lying beyond the shuttered glass. Beyond the smaller trees and far, far away.
Dreamland: Escape.
I gently put the little red pencil down onto the graffiti'd desk and rest my head onto my folded arms. Not much of a pillow, but it'll do.
My eyes gaze around me. There's a student sleeping peacefully on the end of the desk row in front of me. He looks as if he were about to fall off his seat. There's also another student drawing a something into a little note pad on her lap. And another reading a little pocket book about who knows what. I certainly don't.
I look at the blackboard again. Ah. Anbu team tactics. This is the third time in the month that Iruka is making us go over the same exact thing. I find this to be boring. The only thing I have problems with is charka.
Red, blue, purple.
A rainbow I never wanted to see.
But I've still got to keep acting like a fool. Perhaps Iruka knows it too…
My eyes close briefly as I enjoy the silence behind my eyelids. Black, so dark.
Warmth.
"Who cares, anyway?"
I see a flash of colours.
Like thousands of kaleidoscope butterflies,
All in my head..
Perhaps this is a small measure of peace and understanding?
A thing I never found.
Not even in music,
So sweet,
But no one was there to comfort me,
No one to teach me.
Life was just like a dream, you know,
Never ending.
I am cradling a greenish light in my hand, A kunai held within the light. Why?
But drops fall, I don't know whether I'm crying or whether it's raining..
Sudden…
Pine trees in a mossy clearing,
Blue sky,
Walking on water with my light preciously held in my cupped hands.
I am focusing so hard the world doesn't exist any more.
The tree branch is my seat now,
As I cradle my little light in the nightly stars.
I target something…
There!
The red butterfly. A shooting star. Fern and tree bark…
Red; anger or love?
What has been forgotten?
All red.
No clear.
No black and no white. No gray.
Slit pupil.
A rush of anger.
I fall-
-and land with a thud and a wince in between the bench and the desk, one arm clutched around my sore ribs. Someone has pushed me, and Iruka has noticed. Back to the routine. All acting, no heart.
He knows he is angry, I know I am only awake.
The class has fallen silent, waiting for the eventual reprimand.
He is disappointed, I'm only looking bewildered.
It does.
No. I couldn't answer. It's all an act, stupid.
Dobe!
Looser!
Demon, perhaps…
I sit back down at my desk and pick up my little red pencil. Class will continue, and I will add a scribble onto it's dented surface:
A circle.
My blunt lead starts tracing it over and over, pushing into the wood, tracing its path. My knuckles are white.
No black and white,
No end or beginning.
Maybe Illusion,
Silence reigns only within me,
When I wish life was a dream.
There are ups and downs, far too many
But it was never fair to begin with.
But only Child.