Burned Into Ash

Kindling

 I want to be cremated. Who would ever want to be shoved in a box and be put under the Earth. Sprinkle my ashes all over the world so I will be a part of growth and not grief. This wasn't the case for my dad though. Anything would have been nice. Some sort of closure to put me to sleep at night, but no. They assumed he was dead when he went missing. 

I always held some kind of hope that he would come back, but it was quickly deteriorated, along with my mothers sanity. I remember a police officer telling us he was assumed dead. I remember my mother crying, and seven-year-old me attemting to calm my mother. I had no clue what the officer was talking about though, because the wost experiace I have had with death was my goldfish being flushed down the toilet. 

I open my eyes, not being able to sleep anymore with these troubling thoughts. I jump down from the top bunk, and walk into the shabby bathroom. The sink leaks, an I unconciously tap my finger against my leg to matched the uneven rhythm. I look at myself in the craked mirror, and see what I can't change: Me. I'm by no means ugly, but I'm not someone to seek. I know I could try a little harder, but for someone who moves around as much as I do, its not worth it. 

I wander back into the other room olny to find the alarm clock reads 2:48 a.m. I have hours to not be able to sleep- great. I walk down the steps with the slowest pace I can handle. I know that the steps will be just as loud if not louder if I do this, but I do it everythime. It just seems wrong to break the tradition. The last step creeks as I reach the landing, and a light switches on down the hall. 

My heart speads up, because honestly I just don't want to deal with it toninght. 

"Where are you off to?" Says my latest foster dad

"I just need some air, ok?" I reply, not too nicley. 

"I'll give you ten minutes" I give him credit. He really is concerned about all the kids here, but I don't want him to catch my bad luck. I seem to burn everyone around me. It's like my own personal curse. 

I walk out the back door into the cool summers night air. The coolness of the night air shocked my bare arms, making goosbumps raise. As I sprawl out in the grass, I watch the stars. This is a habbit of mine I guess, because not matter what state or town I move to next, the stars will still be there at least. They are the only thing that I let myself get attached to for three reasons. 1. They have been here for millions of years, and me likeing them is not going to make them blink out 2. Even if it did, there ligh takes millioins of years to reach earth so I would be long dead 3. It the onlything I don't have to fear breaking. 

I suppose I should explain my life up to this point, so here it is. I was born 16 years ago, and my name is Ash. When I say Ash I mean ASH. Its not short for Ashley, or any other name for that matter. My father picked out my name. I could not tell you why he liked it, but I supposed he liked things unique. He and my mother were so in love. They got married young, my mother was only 17 when my father proposed. They married the next year and a few months after their wedding they had me. When I was two my father joined the army. When he was gone my mother would become sad, and lock herself in her room much of the time. When I could walk and talk fluently my mother started coming out if the room more, and plan how to surprise dad when he got home.

But then everything crashed, because thats what things do around me. This insident though, is what caused the landslide I called my life.

After a raid done on the base, my father was reported missing. Later they asumed him dead. That was it, I didn't have a father anymore. I realized that when me and mom talked, it was only about dad, because suddenly we wouldn't talk at all. I came home from school everyday to see my moms eyes puffy. I never knew if it  was from crying or drinking. Or both. She lost herself. She always had her eyes open, but she could never see. She stopped talking all together, but when I was in the room with her she would stare at me with her blank eyes. 

I think that a persons sould is not worn upon their sleeve, but instead their eyes. Eyes don't lie as much as we would sometimes like them to. For my mother her eyes died along with my father. 

I have very few memories of my father other than going to movies and getting ice cream with him to celibrate when he came home. 

Now a year after thins I learned to do things for myself, and my mother. I first kearned how to purchase and cook macaroni. I would bring my mother a bowl and would not leave until she ate it. She started leaving me money on the table to get food for us. 

She started dissapearing more, and more though. Sometimes she would not come home at night. It started to become  pattern that when I was getting home from school, she would be leaving. When I would ask where she was going she would answer me with a blank stare. 

When I turned nine, she was gone more than she was home. One day I remembered waiting for her all night only to find that she wasn't comeing home. I didn't go to school the next day for fear she would need me when she got home. I was rong though, because she didn't come home again. It went on like this for three days unti one day, three weeks later, a police officer showed up at my door. He got there just in the nick of time to, because I had spent all the money I had and was almost out of food.

He told me my mother had been busted distributing drugs to minors, while under the influence of crystal meth. When I asked what that was he told me it was a bad thing. Not understanding this I asked "But I though crystals were good things. They make people happy, so why did you take her away from me for gining kids crystals?"

He just shook his head, and took me to the station. I never saw my mom after that. I have been bouncing around from foster homes now since then. 

I know I could not have done anything about my father, but I still feel guilty. Before he would leave us again to go back to the army he would always kneel to my level look me in the eyes and tell me that I was his good luch charm, and if I was thinking of him that he would always be safe. It was a lie I know, but still. He wasn't safe, and now he was dead. I choke down my tears as I stare at the sky. 

"Why did you leave me dad" I scream into the crisp air, and when I'm done I continue to scream into the grass untill my voice cuts out. 

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Please comment on where you would like the story to go, and what you think of it so far. 

This is the first thing I have put on here. I wrote this story when I was ten, and decided to revise it a little. 

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