Feeling Small — Amelie Cayula
When I was younger I would stand on my bed and try to touch the ceiling. I was never really able to complete this goal but I was always so close. If I was just a bit higher, then maybe I could reach it. After failing I’d then go into my brother’s room, which had a bunk bed, and climb the ladder to the top bunk. Then I could touch the ceiling and feel the small groves against my fingertips. I’d end up almost always slipping and falling when trying to climb down the ladder.
I wear big platform shoes when I take a walk alone. I like to think they make me look bigger than I am. So maybe I don’t seem as vulnerable as I truly am. Though I don’t know if it works. When I’m walking in those crowded city streets full of noise, I feel small even with those white platform sneakers. My mom lectures me a lot about how I shouldn’t go out alone. My dad doesn’t really care. My mom gets mad at me when I wear my big shoes as she thinks I’ll break my ankles. My dad bought them for me.
I recently saw a janitor from my old school working at the school I go to now. I almost ran up and hugged her before realizing that would be weird as I had never talked to her in those elementary hallways. But seeing her there gave me a comfort I hadn’t felt yet in highschool. At my old school, she was quiet. She was small. She didn’t boss us around like the other janitors. One time I heard the other janitors talking about her on the way to the bathroom. Now she has pink hair and wears sparkly makeup and seems very vibrant. I also wear sparkly makeup.
Before I was born, when my mom was living with my dad and pregnant with me, she had no money as she couldn’t work and my dad sure wouldn’t help. So in a last effort to feel as if she had some sort of power, to feel as if she wasn’t as small, she dug through her room and found a birthday card from my great grandmother with ten dollars in it. Years later, she ended up divorcing my father and buying a big house with her own money.
In second grade the shortest boy in my class once told me during dismissal on the small concrete steps at the front of our school “It’s better to be smaller because you’re less noticeable.” To this I asked “Am I small?” I can’t quite remember his answer.
Amelie Cayula is a young writer who writes about anything that comes to mind, and especially enjoys writing poetry and non fiction. She currently resides in New Orleans and attends the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts for creative writing and academics. She has been published in Umbra, has a Scholastic writing award and has two DELF diplomas.