Sand Dunes

 

You take a week to run away from the universe & what it is trying to tell you.

You pack what later is not described as 'lightly' and try to escape this reality that you craved.

You run back in time only to realize that everyone has continued on. 

You look for people who know you best & they are there, right where you need them. 

They are saying things you need to hear. 

You escape to less.

Less movement, less scheduling, less clothing that leads to less sweating. 

You look out to a haze of thick air ahead of you and nothing seems focused.

You accept the film that has taken over your perception.

You are calm in yellow peep toe flats and long blue halter dresses. 

Your hair is long this year, your reflection looks drawn but peaceful.

All the heaviness disappears when the wind blows picks up your curls.

Everything feels disconnected, but know you are whole. 

Flight Risk

I am living in this paradox of normalcy and drinking Club Soda from the mouth of the bottle licking germs from strangers. I'm reading biographies of men I've met in another life; men with such strife and stubborn convictions they bring their own young to their knees. I keep referring to the same random fact: Kangaroos eat their own offspring.

These instances stay with you; the experience doesn't follow you but moves along beside you. While I think of this, I look down and see that my hands are the color of summer rain in a satin base.

I will look back at this point in my life, when I was sleeping just to smell familiarity woven into cotton threads and feel overcome with a tiredness I will never learn to articulate. But by then, no one is asking me to. I'm offering a stuttered explanation to drawn, bored faces.

Those months were a time when strangers remarked that I was what you call a flight risk- only months had gone by and even the post office was having difficulty keeping up with me. In this same time of awakening, I started straightening my hair and using sand paper at a rate that alarmed both my roommates and my landlord. When the dust settled, so did a mess of curls against my shoulders.