Ismini Vasiloglou, 12 (Atlanta, GA) Reflecting on a Fault Ismini Vasiloglou, 12 It is always so very effortless to start. Ideas jumble around my head in whirlwinds, forming a cacophony of inspiration and infectious excitement. They fill my mind with a buzzing need I cannot ignore. To pick up a pencil is to breathe, to eat. It is an instinctual, primitive impulse, an irresistible temptation which I dare not resist. To pick up a pencil is to live. Yet things are not quite so simple. I paint an image of perfection, harmonious cooperation between pen and mind that does not last. As sentences form in my head, they struggle to ink into existence. My fingers feel weighty as my mind races past my poor, struggling fingers that can only type so fast. It is the tortoise and the hare, but in this story, the hare never sleeps; he only moves faster and faster until he stops and swerves in another direction. Half-finished stories sigh in silence, abandoned for new ideas. They sit lazily in their Untitled documents, waiting for fragments of a lost dream to return to me. They wait to be shaped and molded and typed on a page into a story worthy of the name. Only I am too afraid to steal the reins from the procrastinating beast which has conquered my world. I watch my characters silently sleep in their half-filled pages, weeping at their unresolved conflicts. I watch my settings sink into despair as they are overrun with my neglectful weeds. This is my fault. I know. Despite my teachers’ and parents’ beliefs, I do understand; my mind is a realm entirely within my reach. I can, technically, finish a story, but I can’t seem to fight my own laziness. This beast, this nemesis, was spawned from my very soul, and it is almost impossible to defeat oneself. Procrastination is a far more powerful enemy than any superhuman storybook villain. I know, I know, there are no excuses; there are no rightful reasons for my actions. Words have given me a chance at wings, but I have taken them too quickly without helping them to fully form. Now all I have is an extra weight on my shoulders as I fall asleep each night. It is not right to say there is a beast or a tortoise and a hare. There is only me. We all have our own self-imposed struggles and this is mine: an inability to finish, to see through long-term projects. And my failures affect others, too: the princess who has yet to escape her ivory tower, the citizens whose dictator’s cruel regime still reigns unchallenged, the captain lost at sea, doomed to never again set foot on land, and all of the other tales I have deserted so quickly that not a word of them was written, not a paragraph or a single page. However, I have come to a simple, comforting conclusion; my progress will not be instantaneous, for I cannot change overnight. I can, however, start small. I can start by finishing this reflection, just one letter, one word, one sentence at a time. This is me. Imperfect, flawed me. But I can grow. I can change—I am still malleable. I can take these wings words have lent me, mend them from their broken, unfinished state, take flight and soar.
Personal Narrative
Happiness Comes to America
All names in this story have been changed for privacy. A few years ago my mom and dad, my two older brothers, and I moved from a refugee camp in Tanzania to Chicago. Now I’m eleven years old. My name is Happiness. One Sunday night I sat down on my usual pillow on the couch between Mama’s legs so she could fix my hair. She divided it into skinny braids and then pulled them into an elastic band on top of my head. “OK, I’m done,” she said. (Sometimes she does talk to me in English instead of Kirundi.) I ran to the bathroom and checked in the mirror. I felt sad. Mama has time to do my hair just once a week, so I would be looking like this till the next Saturday or Sunday. I didn’t say anything to Mama. I just put on my pajamas and went to bed, hoping that everything would be OK in the morning. The next day I went to school with all the braids sticking up. I wanted to sit by my friends Daniella and Ruby, but my teacher asked me to sit between Rosa and Miguel instead. While we waited for class to start, we played a game. But then Miguel began making little jokes about my hair. “Your hair looks like an onion,” he said. “Some kind of vegetable. No, it looks like a tomato!” I wanted to cry. But I just stayed quiet. All day I thought about it. During the passing period I told Ruby and Daniella what Miguel had said. “Don’t worry about it,” they told me. “Just forget about it.” But I couldn’t forget. Things got worse. Our friend Akilah came up to us and said, “Happiness! Did you forget that this was Picture Day?” I looked around and realized that my friends were all wearing their favorite clothes. I was just wearing my school uniform. Oh no! Now I felt as if a bunch of worms had started dancing in my stomach. That afternoon, while we were in line for the pictures, another friend, Julia, comforted me. “Nobody cares if you have a bad hairstyle,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.” When I was in front of the camera, I wanted to put my hands up and cover my hair. But the photographer and her helper wouldn’t let me. They told me to smile, so I smiled. Sort of. Luckily, for the rest of that week no one teased me about that hairstyle. And I found two ways to make things better. Number one, I took in what my friends had told me: Don’t worry. Just let it go. Number two, on Saturday I got permission to use the computer at home, and I searched online to find a hairstyle I liked. I asked Mama to fix my hair that way, and she did. Now we do this every weekend. Mama is really very talented with hair. Happiness Neema, 11 Chicago, ILKigoma, Tanzania This story was published in the June 2021 issue of Stone Soup Magazine
We Are Looking for Freedom
I live in Vietnam. I went to school in Saigon. I has one cat. I has four brother, no sister. My mother selling in her own store. My father was working for C.I.A. before 1975. After 1975 my father stop working for C.I.A. One night at eight o’clock in August 30, 1978, the Viet Cong come and caught my father to put in the jail. Because my father work for C.I.A. At 1979 my dad is dead. One night my mother put the clothes in the bag. I was ask my mother where are we go? My mom said, “I take your brother to visit your grandma.” I so small didn’t know my brother and my mom escape. I saw her sitting on the table with my aunt, and my mom was crying. I came next to her and she said, “You have to live with your aunt.” I don’t know why. My mom gone about a month and my aunt tell me, “Your mother escape.” At one time my cousin, my aunt, and me try to escape, but we can’t because they caught two of my cousin. And they let them out. One day after school, I went to my house. The Viet Cong came and tell me that they have to take my house, tell me to go live at my aunt house. I ask them why I have to live in my aunt house, they tell me that I under eighteen years old, that right now I have to live with my aunt. At April 7, 1982 I escape with my aunt and her daughter. When we went to Cambodia, we there for week. The half way to the camp my aunt and her daughter go another way, and I go another. We don’t see each other for week. I went to the camp name Nong Samet. I live there for three day and my aunt try got in there. We don’t see each other for ten day. I live with woman. She so nice to me. When I and aunt together in Nong Samet for one week we went to the camp name N.W. 82, which is half in Cambodia and half in Thailand. When we live there they don’t has anything much food. Every day they cook rice for us lunch and dinner. We has to cook our own food to eat with rice. Every day we only has eight liter of the water, every day in the hospital has people sick and almost dead. In our tent it so big we live with two hundred people in there. If the tent dirty the Thailand man call the tent people. They came out, stand there, another Thailand man get a stick to hit the Vietnamese, they don’t care about old people or young people. We live there for a year and we went to Pamatnikhom. Our family live there a week and we went to Philippines, we live in Philippines near the mountain. Every day I went to school there. We live there, we got a lot of water, every day they gave the food to us to cook and eat. We very happy. But I miss my grandparents and aunt. One day in Bataan, Philippines, has hurricane, some of the big tree was fall down, some of the ceiling was flying, we so scary, just for few minutes, then hurricane was gone. One day, our name was call to travel to America. On September 29, 1983 in the morning we drive the bus to Manila. We went to the airplane, we fly all the way to Los Angeles. We stay there for five hours and we fly all the way to Denver. And I see my mother and my brothers. Now we together. Originally published in the March/April 1986 issue of Stone Soup Magazine
