Niagara is Steady

I'm saying that I want to know you; and I do at the time- more than I have ever wanted to know another being.
You're eyes feel honest when I look into them. The soft, calculated words you use create a comfort I am not use to. This comfort is short lived though and once you are gone so is the calmness you created. When we sleep, I toss and turns.
Our bodies crush together only to break apart by morning.
It's dark when you leave and I have a hard time falling asleep once you're gone.
The weight of what we have done sits on my chest.
Outside my window I can see the sun rising and the reality begins to set in as the wind blows my blinds up.

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. 

Where Are You?

Elaina tells me that drinking gin to put me to sleep will only make it harder to wake up. I reassure her that I am not trying to make it easy, that I wake up and drink half a bottle of NyQuil to dim the pain of the bright sun. I wake up and go right back to sleep again. I tell her I am now dreaming of Connecticut as a safe haven and  the Mid West as a nightmare.

Lone Red Wall

Years from now, I will be in the midst of life I never knew I'd want or wish for. I will be painting a room to sleep in with a person I have not met yet or someone I have already met many times; someone I admire and loath sometimes at the same time.

I will look back at this point in my life, when I was sleeping just to smell familiarity woven into cotton threads, and take comfort in how far I have come. The empty bucket of paint will bring me back to a time when I was both coming and going but getting no where.

First Few Times

I remember knee length washed out gray skirts and lacy pink shirts. And there was Jack Sparrow hair peering out behind wipers keeping time on winding roads. There were sincere eyes and an honesty that I have since tried to find. I remember falling asleep in the woods, waking up wrapped in a blue down comforter sweating under the sun. It was a summer of thick black headbands with pink hearts and long blond hair; I had the blondest hair. There is no way to reproduce the humidity that July.

This is War, This is Love

I am dreaming of past summers but not in the fantastical way of missing sand between my toes and the warmth of the sun as it browns my freckles. In the middle of the day, while everyone is lathering themselves with tanning oil, I am still hiding under blankets pretending it is June. I cling to itchy pillow shams and sweat as if there was air conditioner blowing on me. The sun sits high and melts my bangs to my forehead through the window.

On the phone with your mother, you promise to keep living. The water is warm and your toes tingle as you step into the tub. When your shoulder gets use to the water you dead down further. The air bubbles feel like waves crashing against your cheeks and it’s the most quiet you have experienced since you woke up. 

In DC, it’s a frenzy. People there are walking around looking for a connection to those they have been left behind by. I take a cab instead of the Metro, and as we change lanes I watch the memorials fade away. It’s happening, this living that everyone does, it’s happening to me and I guess it time to embrace it before it leaves me behind.

Choking on my own gum I wake up to feel the heat from the moon. It's not the 21st of any month, it's not even summer. My sweat is a hallucination that comes from a fever that refuses to break. I cry for the chill of snow to bring relief to my skin.  Our lives are measured by the weather.

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. 

Three Days

They sat around the table with their heads hidden in their hands, almost more embarrassed than sad. The lights were off because the sun had not quite set and a small dog is whimpering in the corner. I feel his pain and his fear with such a force I search for a bruise for the following three days.

The Truth

In New Jersey just outside Paramus, three people were trampled outside of a JC Penny midnight madness sale, the woman who’s son was taken to the hospital,  told reporters “ I got this sweater for 14.00, originally 47.50…. what a steal!”

She only held it up for the cameras after offering to try it on.

Heal, Toe

Everything has never been this exciting and this terrible at the same time. My tongue is numb but so is my head and the empty hollowness echoes while I try to sleep keeping me awake until dawn. I drift off only to wake up groggy in cold sweats, clutching pillows as if they were life vests- as if feathers and cotton could save my life the way the perfect shade of Perfectly Pink has saved so many first dates.

Distraction is the best medicine for a shattered soul. I tell her that staying busy is the only option. Elaina counters that rest will keep me alive. That my body is literally crying for it. I tell her to grab a brush, I’m painting my room, I’m pulling up carpeting and paining over old picture frames. Boy Meets World is playing in the back ground and it’s the season Topanga and Corey break up, he's saying true love conquers all. I’m slopping paint against walls as tears drip into the bucket.

A heaviness has taken over that I can not shake. From across the room Elaina is telling me that my expression gives me away immediately. My face is so drawn she has to stop herself from coming over and hugging me to make sure I am warm.

I run along East Avenue in the evenings, making a left on Goodman and I head towards Monroe Avenue and jog past the Park Bench, past Church Street Pub, the wind whips against my thighs and it stings. My heart is pumping against my chest and I'm still alive. I can feel the life in my bones.

642 Miles Later

It’s not July but the road is familiar and the air is warm. I find myself with the windows down, counting mile markers along route 15 and thinking about the winters that have past and the winters that are waiting for me. I am wondering about the people in Massena and if they are happy and if I will ever be happy in the simple way I saw them that day.

At mile 200 my breathing has caught up with my heart beat and I have a faint curiosity about if you’ve woken up yet and who you are next to. I still see you sitting across from me retelling a rehearsed story, as honest as I'd accept you to be but still completely exposed.

I once said, “I want to know you in a way I would never let you know me.”  As true as my words were then, they are more so true as I cross state lines and it begins to snow. The silence of snow brings about a foreign calmness that I have not felt since I stood on the steps of Adams Street in a sea of black and white and pink.  

I listen to talk radio and pretend I am in the studio, driving past small towns, I am being interviewed and hear myself telling strangers through the airwaves “I thought he had actually killed me, but I just kept driving”.

The End

It was cold for the middle of October and I didn’t wear a coat. I had forgotten how unforgiving the wind can be when you live by the water. You tried to fix everything before you left; the sign on top of the window that I couldn’t reach, the parking lot that wasn’t big enough for my car, the leaky faucet in my bathroom that flooded my tub. You suggested two cheap, but decent, bottles of wine that I will never drink.

I called to tell you thank you and I know this voice-mail will be listened but I also know  you will never hear me. Thank you for the color yellow, wind in my hair & blueberry wheat beer and for reminding me I truly am flawed if not free. I’m sorry all you learned was how to make a decent mimosa and that wet leaves are just as dangerous as black ice.

Eastward

It's Tuesday and we're drinking a Bloody Mary at a bar in Denver International Airport waiting to board our flight home. She says, as we're watching the tarmac for incoming planes, "Man, this state is flat."

And I say, "I can drink to that." And we do.

It was Hot & there was no Wind

We all went from having one life to live, to bracing ourselves for the end. We began drinking and driving, sleeping with strangers and telling off our bosses and best friends. With no time left, we couldn’t stop ourselves from telling everyone exactly how we felt two years ago when they spilled that cranberry and vodka on our beige suede love-seat.

We broke up with our boyfriends and girlfriends sighting the need to be free now that the end was not just coming, but was here. The dogs slept on the bed, nestled in blankets filling up the empty space. We wanted to be free, but not alone.

Two blocks from my house the looting at a Toys R Us was so bad that parents began using their children for protection. But no one saw the promise in our youth now that the world was in shambles, now that hurricanes and earthquakes were literally blowing us off our shaking foundation.

The tiny armor was useless. The future was about to be over.

I lied awake that night listening to the evacuation sirens telling us to go anywhere, but also nowhere. I tried to sleep but the sky was filled with thick hail that beat against the roof until holes broke through and created the sky lights we always talked about installing. News reports blared from the living room with nothing to say except “this is the end." The hope from their voices felt more like a promise than a threat.

112 Main Street

The summer that 22 people died from heat exhaustion on the east coast before August 1st, was the same year I drove 450 miles to say goodbye to a person I barely knew.

As the sweat pooled around the back of my knees I couldn't get the tiny yellow-shingled apartment out of my head. The heat index reached 115 before noon; all I could remember was the month we spent with no air conditioning, sitting on the roof watching the pavement sizzle. The fans blew hot air against our faces and your bangs stuck to your forehead.

Everywhere the heat was making people crazy. Not the put a leash on your cat and take her for a run crazy; the getting married and buying homes with central air crazy. Couples started trading in their vacation homes for summer camps and family reunions, claiming that now was the time to start appreciating one another.

The 11 o'clock news reported on drowning victims swallowing salt water to stay hydrated- fathers openly wept on camera. These images should have broken our hearts, but the heat barreled down so hard that no one could feel anything. We walked around numb.

That's around the time people started saying “I love you” when they actually meant “get away from me”. None of us wanted to be alone if this was the end, because holding a strangers hand is better than reaching out to empty space. At least that's what the statistics proved; the new baby boom would hit that coming spring. Articles were written questioning if the new Summer of Love was upon us- Could it be- had the heat saved humanity?

When I made it to your parents’ house I was greeted by the same light house that welcomed me some 5 years before. It stood creating a shadow on the lake, cooling off the sand just enough to make it bearable for visitors and a little too cool and crowded for the locals. The beach below was littered with bodies and empty towels, sitting on the pier all I could feel was sweat as I watched the people sizzle.