Tag: sunnysideupish

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.

Missing the husband I’ve yet to meet.

Though you are not here – I must confess,

that I can feel you holding me in the moments between being awake and being asleep.

That’s where I am loving you.

That’s where I still believe that you exist.

That’s where I still believe you might be on your way.

Holding me.

Kissing me.

Touching me.

Loving me.

–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.

You Are My Sadness.

You are the sadness that I will never outrun.

Or outwalk.

Or outcrawl.

Or outlove.

You are the melancholy deep in my bones, multiplying in the marrow.

You are the weariness in my face.

You are the only daydream, I cannot erase.

Until we meet again, sweet sorrow.

–S.

I Called You.

Excerpt from years ago.

I’ve had your number memorized by heart for years now. The last few years – I haven’t actually used it for anything. We are over. We don’t talk anymore. When someone doesn’t live in the same city as you in certain ways it is easier to get over them.

I never have to see you at the grocery store. I never have to pass by you on my way to class. I never have to see you at the bar with another girl. Friends and family won’t tell me that they talked to you or saw you. I don’t have to go through those feelings.

Something was making it hard for me to fall asleep two nights ago. The truth is that I haven’t thought about you in a while. And then out of the darkness of my room – your phone number manifests itself into my head. I get this feeling that I can’t shake. I have to call you. I really don’t want to go there. I don’t want to hear your voice. It’s been so long. Too long.

And then my fingers are flying across my phone. My phone is lighting up. My memory is dialing your number. Your phone is ringing. Of course I blocked my own number, so you couldn’t see it and muted my end of the phone call.

Creep, I know.

It went to voicemail and some random girl explained that she couldn’t get to her phone.

I hang up.

It gave me a sense of comfort that the number didn’t belong to you anymore.

I was trying to fall asleep last night when it hit me – I was wrong.

The number I dialed two nights ago was so wrong. The right number came to me. I dialed it again, blocked my number, and muted the call.

You answered.

My breath caught and my heart sped up.

You answered after five or six rings because I woke you up. It was about 1:30 in the morning and your voice was heavy with sleep. You kept saying hello and then you hung up.

I wanted to cry. When we were mad at each other – I would always call you with my number blocked, just so I could hear your voice before I went to sleep.

I was a teenager, in love, and dumb.

I never told you it was me and you never talked about the blocked phone calls you’d been receiving.

I think that you knew. I’m almost sure that you did.

I wanted to cry because that voice was still so familiar to me after all this time. It had been the soundtrack to many of my summers, but that boy was different now. He became a man. I was different now. I became a woman.

I hope that life is treating you okay.

And I wonder if you ever get a feeling that you can’t shake in the middle of the night telling you to call me – maybe I would pick up. Maybe you’d hear my voice again and it wouldn’t have changed.

–S.

A Girl in a Ghost Town.

When I first started venturing out into ghost towns, I was fascinated with the idea of being alone in a town.

I was trying to escape myself after a bad break-up.

I was disappearing without actually disappearing.

I felt gone like the people who left these places for various reasons.

I was looking for something that I didn’t know I needed, until I found it.

I imagined the ghosts of people long gone, loving and laughing on these forgotten grounds.

I fell in love with the personality of rusty, beat-up cars and houses with caved in foundations.

I fell in love with the way the breeze caressed my face differently than in the city.

I fell in love with the song of birds and insects.

I fell in love with the melody of swaying grass.

The structures reminded me of myself.

Abandoned, but standing.

Falling, but somehow still sturdy.

–S.