Today it rained, let electrical flashes fly and even got humid. Sick from a red eye, hung over from a wedding, my weary bones climbed in bed every free chance it got. I slept like a rock.
Her heavy sad eyes were surrounded by those she had known for only a brief while. Their spirits, laughter, and conversation filled her tiny apartment, but not her heart. She was lonesome. The simple creaks of her door, the clink of the silverware against an empty plate and the ambient sounds of the flashing television were puppets in a theater playing host to no one, only a pair of attention craving cats and an empty bed. I got a text on the way home thanking me for nothing. I felt humbled and alive.
When we grow up your friends get married and settle into patterns. Not denim or plaid but rotations of the ordinary. It made me a little uneasy to swallow the thick air of the predictable. The lack of unknown, the distinct sense of control and the speed of which life drains from our spirits was enough to make me feel old. I never want to feel like that again. I never want to wake up and learn what I had been told I would. I never want a fortune cookie to be my only source of inspiration. I never want to answer the same phone calls and drink the same beers. I never want to give a fake hug.
Youth is what we’re all made of. Even the 92-year-old man whose sunken shoulders no longer fill out the jacket he had bought a decade ago. His wrinkled hands palming his cane and missing his dead wife. He doesn’t think of her anymore, it hurts too bad. But that ambition for life, that crisp sense of friendship with the sun is what I’m after. I could sleep myself to death in a matter of weeks. I could fall into depression, sink into a slumber of nothingness and eventually die. And so could he. But my feet itch for more. My eyes burn for what I can’t see. And my heart is still learning to read. So is his. If I had all the answers, I’d be boring. If I could sleep with any woman, I’d be jaded. If my soul were at peace, I’d smoke more pot. I don’t want the perfect sense of self or the cookie cutter experiences, I want ride that will leave me booting with knowledge, and laughing with immaturity. If I live in a perpetual state of routine and fulfilled expectations then I am already dead. My shell shakes the eager hands of those who think I’ve made it. I smile back and whisper of escape. I pray my word remains mine, and my story a mess. Free verse, no paragraphs, no periods, no ending. Just commas and quotes. My fingers feel free tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment