12:43 p.m. - 2005-07-29
I don't recognize the mirror
Put it all on the line and hope for the best and when they erase it, don't cry. Say your goodbyes. Wave from sidelines and close your eyes. No. Wait. Three years back and I'm braiding your hair and consoling your tears. Your tears, but not you. It's easy to hide from someone who doesn't want to find you. Sisters who babysat their siblings used to play games like these. Hide n' go seek where the seeker sits and does not move their eyes from the television. It was never cruel. It was clever. It was ...it was boys in jeans, looking like spring, shirts off and hair a mess calling it a trend. That's what she said when I asked her what she meant by it. And suddenly I understood. No. It was never cruel. Never. It's like dawn in the evening? Yes. Exactly. Everywhere there is touching, playing, giggling. Girls that glow in the moonlight and dance for the stars and they whisper in my ear "I want him" but, you can't have him. No property. No real estate. We walk the highway smelling like sea salt and eyes glazed like sea glass. Skin sticky and salty and we're stuck together. We're in this together. And I want to ask you, are you okay? are you happy? do you love your life? are you happy with being you? I want to ask, but instead I'll stand here, watching you, closing my eyes and swaying to a beat that I have locked in my head. How do you watch what you can't see? It's so easy that it's hard to explain. I wish I could share a mind with you, at some times i think we already do, but it would make so much sense to you and me. We'd always understand.
There is so much to tell you all, but I am in an elevator and I keep going up and my ears will pop soon and I can't tell you anything in an elevator and I cannot say a thing to you when my ears need to pop. Just watch my eyes and i'll watch the sky and maybe you'll float away, but perhaps you'll float away with all my secrets.
Girls with cigarettes and too tight personalities lean against doors and point long, thin fingers at those who pass. And it's so unclassy, but they sip cocktails in lingerie strategically designed to look like a slutty dress. Slutty is said in long sloshy, slurpy, loopy, and rolled letters, that fall clumsily off the tongue and lay in the air in tipsy formations. These letters should have been burned. but I had so much to say to you. So much. But it's the elevator effect. The higher I get, the less I can say to you. Until there is a maximum amount of words i can use each day and before we know it, I won't even say hi. I'll just wave. Or walk by, but you'll know i meant to, right? You'll know I wanted to, right? You'll know I was just nervous, right? You'll know?
Itchy knees and whispers. That's all this is. Innocent. completely innocent. But, they look like summer. Bug bites, sun burns, scraped knees, and grass stains, but they look like summer, too. barely clothed, lying on top of each other, bathing suits, shirts off, tight jeans, and exhausted. that's what it is. Exhaustion. It's so innocent, but it looks like summer. beach nights, capturing lights that flicker off your eyes and rocks embedded into sandals and toes. Sand in my hair and salt on my skin. Fingers that taste like the horizon. But we're too young to sleep and too old to cry and too this and too that and stop humoring me.
Butterflies tell me about years ago. childhoods they slept through because being awake was too hard. They were too young to understand, to feel ugly, to be killed and stepped on and humiliated by the rejoicing afterwards. they were too young, but so were you and you have scars and secrets and headaches and stories that you'll never tell. You were too young to grow up. But you had to, you had to and I turn my head because I can't look at you, because i'm ashamed, because I know and I was there.
We're not allowed to blink today because I'm not lying and because I feel sick and nervous and I'm worried about so many of them. My circle is abandoned. Maybe we've all forgotten how to love ourselves.
Summer air reminds me that we are invincible. But Fall makes me feel comfortable and lazy and I snuggle in oversized sweatshirts and oversized chairs and I lay my head back to sleep, because I'm safe here. I'm safe in this feeling and this season . I'm safe, knowing what I know and how to tell the time based on your comings and goings.
It's safe here. And I've got hours to spend telling you stories about absolutely nothing. because I want you to be safe too. I want to protect you. That's why she sings.
Don't cry because you're lost, she says, if you must cry then cry because you don't know when you'll be found.
