A Day in a Life | Teen Ink

A Day in a Life

June 4, 2021
By Lydiaq ELITE, Somonauk, Illinois
Lydiaq ELITE, Somonauk, Illinois
172 articles 54 photos 1026 comments

Favorite Quote:
The universe must be a teenage girl. So much darkness, so many stars.
--me


The sky in the morning is like pajamas that were washed with a dry-erase marker. The sky in the afternoon is like weak blue Kool-Aid, spiked Kool-Aid, spiked hot Kool-Aid in the motorcycle gangster’s satchel. The sky in the evening is smeared like the math teacher’s chalkboard after he taught quadratic equations to forty hormonal eighth-graders. So many skies.

There’s a sale on used underwear in the resale garbage dump of a shop. Some bums are playing tambourines by the courthouse as a protest. God knows what they are protesting for. There’s a trash-can garage band called Purple Snowman playing Paul Simon songs. There’s a televangelist on TV who just got a news bulletin from an angel named Michael that you need to put your private jets into storage in preparation for the second coming.

In this town, nobody knows what’s coming down. Hate and anger and violence seethe under the surface, and come up at odd moments, in strange faces and figures—a stunted and angry teenager, a cripple with bright blue eyes, a toothless gas-station robber, a rebellious missionary kid, a fierce and frightening old woman, a deaf man with a hatchet collection, a neglected child, a four-hundred pound trucker, a homeless man in a stolen windbreaker who believes he is an antelope, a stoner riding the merry-go-round. They will one day break loose and break free in a way nobody will ever forget.


The author's comments:

This is a description of a small, desperate, boring town, based on the works of Southern writer Carson McCullers. In her novels, she writes about a sense of loneliness and desparation that it is manifest in people with oddities, freaks, diseases, and phsycial deformaties. The towns have an outward feeling of peace, but tension is never far below the surface.


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This article has 3 comments.


on Jun. 8 2021 at 12:19 am
SparrowSun ELITE, X, Vermont
200 articles 23 photos 1053 comments

Favorite Quote:
"It Will Be Good." (complicated semi-spiritual emotional story.)

"Upon his bench the pieces lay
As if an artwork on display
Of gears and hands
And wire-thin bands
That glisten in dim candle play." -Janice T., Clockwork[love that poem, dont know why, im not steampunk]

fyi i tried to make green lipstick, and black lipstick. neither turned out, I can basically only homemaker makeup bc chemicals, so I ground up charcoal for the black and as a result it feels like kissing broken glass, and the green I didn't add enough oil so ill fix it whenever the weather dies down and I can turn on the stove.

Lydiaq ELITE said...
on Jun. 7 2021 at 11:48 pm
Lydiaq ELITE, Somonauk, Illinois
172 articles 54 photos 1026 comments

Favorite Quote:
The universe must be a teenage girl. So much darkness, so many stars.
--me

Oh it's okay I grew up in a weird neighborhood

on Jun. 7 2021 at 10:58 pm
SparrowSun ELITE, X, Vermont
200 articles 23 photos 1053 comments

Favorite Quote:
"It Will Be Good." (complicated semi-spiritual emotional story.)

"Upon his bench the pieces lay
As if an artwork on display
Of gears and hands
And wire-thin bands
That glisten in dim candle play." -Janice T., Clockwork[love that poem, dont know why, im not steampunk]

vivid descriptions!

im basiclly obligated to ask, do you write about weirdos in broke neighborhoods for fun or because you need help in some way? as much fun as some of your characters are, I have to check.