Coloured white as chalk by the winter’s cold I still am working, moving, telling a story for her. And although I am not artistic with a paintbrush, she paints me as brightly as a canvas with nail polish and neon marker so I always will stand out. The air is my stage where I float and I move and I show the world that sound is optional, and that beauty can be seen and smelt and touched. She uses me as a way to vent, to communicate to the world when she does not want them to know what she thinking. I am a memorization tool, over and over I spell a name, a date, a time, anything to help her get over the fact that the rest of the body is not as sharp and quick as I am. Do not take me to be self-centred though, many a day I go un-used, the verbal language simpler in a world that does not always take kindly to the language I speak. But in the dark of night when sleep comes too slow I pass the time, in a fit of anger I am what prevents a harsh word from being spoken out loud, and I am her pass into a secret world that does require anything but a pair of eyes and an open mind. And I can guarantee you, she has both.

i am her most prized [precious] possession her almost best friend even though i cannot speak. i listen though, in my pages are the hopes and dreams and [fairytale] thoughts of a teenage girl with [green] blue eyes and crazy coloured hair. i accompany her everywhere to the [dark] blue ocean of bc far across the country to a bustling southern ontario city. my journey is made comfortable in the [pin covered] backpack with my other cohort in life the [neon] pink almost run out pen. only she ever knows i am always there waiting patiently for the next time shell pull me out and spill her thoughts. she is a writer at heart her favourite poems grace my pages with [tear stained] xs and os so they never [ever] get lost. her handwriting is messy [neat] and curly q with hearts and dots and dashes in the most [random] odd spots. but i don’t mind. i sort through the scribble and the rainbow range of it as she writes for sometimes hours [and hour] on end just lying on the ground as the music blasts in the background. and when im put safely away wherever she deems fit i know that there is always [for sure] a next time.

She is the one who owns me, who picks me up everyday from the wooden stand that I sit on in the corner of her sparkling glow in the dark room and plays me. She’s the one that calls me her baby, Stella, who won’t let anyone else touch me, who I think cares about my safety more than she does of her little brother. Yet when she sits down on the white carpet, and her multi coloured nails pick away at my strings the whole world vanishes. And everything I have seen and heard over the day, her yelling at her brother, humming a random song, crying into her journal, sitting watching TV while doing her homework vanishes, and the only thing I can pay attention to is her. The way her tongue sticks out just slightly between her teeth as she concentrated with zen like calmness, her eyes washing back and forth between that music book and me as she works diligently to master that new Blink song. There are times that once she slides the black journal back to its hiding spot that she picks me up and plays me, letting her emotion twist and distort into sound that wafts around the room. Other times she just plays. Plays because she is happy, plays because she is sad, plays because there is nothing else for her to but play everything and nothing at all.