Reflections of Innocence

mohol

SARA MILNE-FLAMER

“Innocence ends when we are stripped of the delusion one likes oneself.” - Joan Didion

Small, sweet shadows cast magic onto concrete

I used to curl myself into the cracks between the houses on our street I used to giggle every time I was found while playing hide-and-go-seek

Never lose that softness sweet Sara, They would all say

Back when I was small enough to skip between hopscotch lines, of cynical syntax Back when I was small enough to believe in, the magic my shadow cast

Never lose that softness sweet Sara, They would all say

Softer fabric inclined to fray I started to unravel as I traveled beyond my city block Getting caught on institutes made of academic cliches Getting knotted in a web of fraudulent small talk

I became a tangled string caught on other people’s projections, soft and fragile, dissolving into dust I became a mess of tangled reflections, of my own disgust

Casting shadows of jumbled lines, of cynical syntax Wide enough that, I would have been able to fit inside its cracks

Never lose that softness sweet Sara.

cassettebleue

Meditations on Chaotic Colouring

SARA MILNE-FLAMER

1) I got in trouble in second grade for colouring outside the lines. 2) Ms. D said I needed art lessons, to learn discipline. 3) I just liked how the colours looked, spread and spilt, ignoring lines confining colour.

Dear Ms. D, I’ve dedicated over a decade of my life learning to be disciplined. I have tried to steady my body into single file lines. I have devoted endless time to deeply diving into the monastic meditations of disciplined disciples. I have attended those art classes you demanded. I even got myself into one of those institutes of upperlevel conformity that breeds the disciplined and distressed. The funny thing is,

88) I did better writing mismatched lines, than over a decade of standing in them. 93) One of the wisest things I learnt while at a centre for centring oneself is that, being centred can never be achieved if you centre yourself in a circle someone else draws. 7) My art classes always ended with spilt paint, messy abstractions of antitheses. 4) I spilt colour all over that fancy 4-year degree in conformity, and it came out as a still life of humanity.

Dear Ms. D, I guess you were right. I still spill colour all over our unruly reality, ignoring lines confining colour.

Sara Milne-Flamer was born in Toronto ON. She attended an art based high school there, where she developed a love of creative writing, photography, and acting. Sara is currently living in Vancouver and has just completed her undergraduate degree at UBC in interdisciplinary studies where Sara’s primary focus was psychology, combined with creative arts. Sara is working towards a career as a therapist and believes that artistic creation is an important tool in the healing process and hopes to incorporate that into her work, one day, as a therapist. At this point Sara has yet to publish her poetry but is taking the time now that her degree has finished to start submitting her work and is very excited about what her writing life will look like in the future.