Tag: emotion

Fading into the Background.

I think of myself as a side table that holds a lamp.

Or maybe I am the lamp.

Or a dining room chair.

Or a piece of art hung unbalanced on the wall.

Or a dusty picture frame.

Or an ottoman nobody sits on.

Or maybe I’m a spatula sitting in a drawer that’s barely opened.

Or a battery in a remote control.

That’s how working customer service makes me feel.

Like a piece of furniture, a piece of decor, or a kitchen appliance.

Something devoid of humanity.

I think I had two meaningful conversations today and they were both with co-workers.

Somedays, I don’t even know that there are two.

And I wonder – how much longer do I have it in me to be a ziploc bag or a plastic orchid or a garden gnome?

I wonder.

–S.

This is how it happens.

It happens whether you want it to or not. Somehow without actively noticing it, you pick up bits and pieces of your parents. You hope for the best parts. Mom’s ability to be a better person and be nice to everyone. To see the best in others. Dad’s ability to make everyone around him laugh. The walking party.

And then there are those things that you can’t change, but maybe you could live without. Mom’s shyness. Dads temper. And then you wake up one day and you’re all of these things mixed together in a blender. And your mom tells you, you’re just like your dad. And your dad tells you, you’re just like your mom.

But they are things you can’t live without. Living and breathing examples of the people you love most. You’re a paper mache art project made by people who didn’t always know what they were doing, but did the best they could.

–S.

Drowning.

When love arrived:

Flowers grew in my heart.

Butterflies grew between my hips.

Diamonds floated in the ocean in my stomach.

A tree grew from my spine.

I never knew what it was like to feel a love, all mine.

Birds sang in my ears.

The aroma of roses permeated through my nostrils.

Bees left honey on my lips.

Sugar, sweet like your kiss.

When love left:

I slept with vultures in my bed,

I was the animal they circled thinking it was dead.

Butterflies turned into moths at my feet.

Bitter tastes replaced all of the sweet.

The flowers in my heart shriveled up and died.

The bees flew away.

The tree from my spine uprooted itself and fell.

I felt the pain mark its way down to every vertebrae.

The birds singing into my ears drowned with me in the ocean of emotions residing in my stomach.

They buried me six feet under,

Using my screams to replace the sounds of the thunder.

–S.