Angel (prose poetry - Neville Longbottom)

1: Prose poetry

Neville Longbottom.

Sweet as a breeze, or grains of sand which under a microscope reveal many giant crystals.

Earth stained fingers, cold and chapped. Four-leaf clovers with a torn out leaf. Worms sawed into two by the rubber soles of specky children. A bee with a crumpled wing of similar fate.

Spending too much time alone, cheeks reddened by the battering freezing wind. Earlobes that burn when you touch them, irritated skin on the palms impossible to wash off. Tiny rocks or fossils found in mud. Collectibles like buttons, bits of metal (screws, coins, locks, bobs), pieces of wool or wood. Minitature sculptures of bark flowers and grass.

Streaming your fingers in algaed lake water, ripples at the surface. Mud that rides up on your wellies, and the sticky sound of footprints in the soil.

Loneliness, that feeling when you spend more time amongst plants than humans, and you wonder who are your real friends. The urge to love something or someone, at least more than being outside. And not remembering any person who fit those descriptions. The uncertainty of being liked by any of your mates, like you could wake up any day and they'd have forgotten about you.

Staring in a mirror, and feeling ugly. Even though you have freckles, a white rosy tint, and hair like your parents, Longbottom written all over your features, there just seems to be something wrong. Maybe it's the goddamn front teeth that made him look like he was biting in his own nervousness. Or the lack of jawline from the bear cheeks. Or that he didn't know what to do with his hair, he didn't comb it. Thinking: "that's what they see" when you walk in the corridors and thinking that evidently, that's why everyone stayed away. The feeling of helplessness in social situations. Sitting at the edge of the table where your friends are, listening and never talking, and if you're last to finish your food noone will wait for you. Wondering what it's like to be the center-point of the joke. Or what the hell they were talking about, all this gossip, interests and inside jokes he wasn't in on. Wondering if you eat too much or too little. Thinking that noone cares about you, and yet you feel observed constantly. You're holding your fork wrong, noone eats like that, you have sauce on your cheek, you look so fat when you eat.

Walking the corridors alone, and knowing that if you meet a group of Slytherins, you'll just have to bear their naggings because noone will stop to help, so maybe you deserve it. You protest some day, and it stops, but not for long. They're just out for someone to undermine, you just have a face with 'loser' written all over it.

Because that's what it is, you don't feel like others, ever. Reasonably, you know everyone's the same, but whatever Neville does, at the end of the day he's always alone. Surely if everyone felt the same- people would speak up?

The unending feeling of missing out, that you're too "old for your own age". You already missed out on a childhood, now you're missing out on teenhood. You're not sure what it is, but there's some sort of camaraderie you're never involved in. Yet you feel dumber, and more childish than everyone. It could be called being "pure".

Wanting to care for someone more than you want someone to care for you. Just to have that one person, Neville never had that person. Not a sibling, not parents, not friends (he would feel too overbearing if he started caring too much).

The constant feeling that reality isn't really real- is it. The skies are too grey, everything is too boring and impossible to grasp, both socially and physically. Feeling like home is yourself, or nature, not anything else.

Green his favourite colour.

Later in his years, feeling incredibly boring. One might call it being humble or easy-going. Forgetting that you're a person- or feeling and looking the most average imaginable. Wondering if you're invisible. Wanting to rip out your hair and flatten your cheeks, and that fat front no clothes can hide. Hating your clothes, wanting to hide, wondering how anyone could be attracted to you. Feeling like your laughs ruins jokes, and your existence ruins gatherings. 

Completely forgetting your own personality. And realising you're great at being sympathetic, but you can't talk about yourself ever. You've learnt enough common culture to pass as a non-freak. Wondering what others get up to- there's no way their life is as boring as yours. Wondering if anyone will ever be interested in your hobbies for a change.