Sunshine Daydreams

I’ll throw myself into work

and dissolve like a sugar cube

under the tongue of life.

Maybe I was always meant to disappear.

Into something. Instead of someone.

Hours in the sun devoted to washing cars, shining tires and spraying the weeds…to earn an approving look from my father.

I would wait expectantly on the stoop for my cousins…thinking we’d all go on a hike together soon. Except they’d already left and forgot to tell me.

Novels worth of text messages between my older sisters. Forever a listening ear to their troubles and triumphs. I’d make sure my clothes weren’t too revealing, my makeup not too done so as not to intimidate them.

And still at 29 years old I sit with the age old ache.