#ongoingprocess

You came back for a brief moment, a rendezvous

            more an illusion, a memory, than anything else

Like the plush spring petals that fall as if they were

            a dusting of crisp winter snow

Like the crimson autumn leaves that veil the ground, 

            so vibrant you would swear they were the setting sun.  

But just like the glaze of a mirage on the hot syrupy asphalt, 

            you were never really there at all. 

Spinning and whirling, the tendrils of steam rise off the water: I skim my hands across the surface. The heat glazes eyes, fogs thoughts, and slows everything down. Swinging slowing side to side the water twirls and dances around my stomach. The haze steals my train of thought. I looked out expecting to see my memories dancing in front of me, scenes of how things were playing in the thick blanket of fog. I can feel the blush in my face, pulsing through my capillaries. I can feel the blood rushing through the tips of my fingers and toes. I feel waves of heat coming off the top of my head. I’m melting into the smooth swirls of water.

Fade back to the summer, the cool breeze of evening spins and whirls around my skin. The heat comes off the pavement in waves. The thick bottle cap glasses of confusion hang heavy on my eyes for the first time. Dry grass smells golden and soft. We walk: I drop, I pick up, I laugh, I drop, I pick up, I laugh. I’m in a rut, a pattern, a rhythm, and your arm is around me the whole time, always there; like a root holding me in place. Everything was golden and wonderful, soft and warm. We lounge in packs across the field: there’s rhythm, music, laughter, and shouting. My hands run through the silk of your hair: braiding, brushing, twirling, spinning. You know I can’t sit still. My marker traces your skin, skimming across the valleys of your shoulder blades and swirling down your arm in a hundred different shapes and patterns. Tattoos. It’s beautiful. It’s art. I’m creating something beautiful, but it will fade away. So I start again, drawing and braiding over and over, trying to make something that’ll last.

You shave when you want a change. All it takes is a scraping knife to turn your life around. You shaved to show you're intentions, but I never saw your face. What do I have to shed? I could shed my skin, stripping the layers and layers down until all that’s left of me is myself, but what good would that do? Instead I leave a mark, something solid and substantial: proof. No I am not talking about the scar that zigzags its way down my upper arm; a battle scar from a long time ago. I am talking about the grey in my hair; streaked like a horror movie survivor. A traumatic moment can turn your hair white, but when things got a little better I turned it to cotton candy fluff. One day, I will snip it off, because sometimes the past has to be forgotten. Running and spinning, hula hoops and twirling, handstands and rolling down hills. Soft blades of grass under my hands, your jacket heavy on my shoulders; dusk is the perfect time of day. Your words and the sun falling over me in waves. “no, no, no, I’m sorry, that shouldn’t happen, I understand, you’re lovely, oh really, so are you, that cant happen, that shouldn’t happen, oh you are so lovely” Goose bumps rise up on my shins and the back of my neck. I am always chilled, numb, an ice cube in a desert, but something about you makes my chest warm.

Jolt forward to the pristine start of the year. January is when people try to pull their lives together. I can’t eat. I am freezing. Shaking. I have pairs and pairs of tights, jeans, sweaters, and sweatshirts wrapping around and suffocating me. Heavy blankets push me down. All this pressure is what I need, something to smooth out the goose bumps on my skin and stop the shudders and shaking. The sky is gray and my skin is ashy, it feels gray. I stand up and everything spins: the world inside my eyelids is not stable or substantial. My stomach rolls, twirling around its self, tying knots that I don’t know how to undo. Blankets and layers and layers of clothes pressing down on me, I press my hands down into my eyes. Press. Pressure. Something is what I need. There is so much nothing and all I need is some something. All I have is past tense. When a train stop suddenly everyone is propelled, shooting forward and backward in their seats. It’s the shock, the sudden-ness, that hurts them. If people know to brace themselves before the crash, they soften the impact. Its only when something comes out of nowhere that you find yourself thrown around: spinning, easy pray to forces, a rag doll, that horrific moment when a baby tumbles over too close to the coffee table.

Remember the wind whipping through my hair, radio up loud? There are so many of us. We are all each others blankets, the soft plush of the seats pressed against our backs; pressure. Speeding with the wind, cooling, twirling, spinning, chaotic. Hot sun beats down on us, rhythm, sound, feeling. Noon is the best time of day. Our voices twirl through the crackling base of the music and laughter, somewhere glass shatters. 

I saw the world through your eyes once and hated it. The only way I can describe it was a kaleidoscope; unimaginable depth, and it got under my skin. My first instinct was to run, and I did, until, sinking back to earth, I was myself again; sweaty, dusty, and content on the couch. The rest of the day, I floated around. Rainbow glass refracted around the room and the sun warmed me down to the tips of my fingers. A moment of giving anything to jump out of my skin for a day of bliss. Thats the way things are supposed to work right? Well what do you do when you have a moment of perfect, a moment where you pray and wish and hope and beg that the clock will just freeze and let you stay that way, only to leave you with an empty feeling and restless energy. If I learned anything, it is that the clock moves way too fast.  It was worth it, but that doesn't mean I know what to do now. Fall back, and it’s autumn. We are soaring high up, sitting on the top of the monkey bars like cool kids in 5th grade. Its night and the breeze dances on the back of my neck. I am freezing. I reach for a strong hold, something steady: I need to balance. Don’t you know how clumsy I am? I can’t reach for you, you’re far away: behind a thick fog of all the things that didn’t get said this last week, behind hair extensions and tree climbing and the scratches on your back. Your hand and words reach through the fog and the only way to describe how I feel is golden. Everything starts to shine and white noise beats through the speakers. Heat radiates from my hands to your hands. The city is asleep, uneasy, but we are joined at the hands and through the speakers, spinning and twirling through the empty streets.    Sometimes the only difference between me and glaciers is the pressure of your tattered jacket on my shoulders. I am forever in a tangle of people, arms around waists and shoulders, collar bones and wrists touching, trying to stay warm. If I didn’t have friends I would have hypothermia. The fog whirls around and the light reflects in every droplet of water. Everything spins and I realize that I forgot to breathe. The middle of the night is when everything is sharpest.

Spin around, and you’ll end up somewhere in the middle of all this. Somewhere in the middle of a sea of people, waves of jackets and voices and laughter. Hundreds of people but you’re like a magnet. Every time I look up I see twisting. Every time I close my eyes I see branches intertwining and snakes. I am in a labyrinth and no matter where I go there are always doe eyes, concerned looks, “are you okay?” It’s a bad dream, no matter how far and fast I run I cant get out. People surround me everywhere, but all I see is snakes and branches. There is a constrictor tightening around me, and no matter where I run I end up where I started. All my make up is gone now. Sometimes the night is apathetic, or worse, concerned.

Sometimes there was a sprig of lavender, beaded bracelet, or red wool scarf. Sometimes when I stepped back your eyes glazed over, a pained glacier blue, but even worse was when I stepped forward and your eyes turned deep green, anger. Sometimes everything fades grays and black, or too vivid: a prism of colours. I forget everything or remember it all. Sometimes I just had to lock my jaw or shrink away. Once your eyes glazed up when the needle pierced you. I held your hand. Tattoos last forever. I think you were sincere most of the time, but nobody would blame you for lying. Bandaids never fit the cuts quite right.

You’re finished, moved on and gone, but I’m still stuck here, I’m dying to be stuck here with you. Sitting on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night with a fat balloon of silence between us is the closest thing i’ve felt to relief. Even now, you’re behind my eyelids, in every fold, corner, and crease of my brain; slinking around tying knots in things. Somehow when you tried to rip yourself from my life you just dug yourself in a little bit deeper. Dug me down just a little bit further into this rut.

The sickly smell of acid bile, like how my stomach feels before I see you. The crashing of wind, waves and rain outside the window, dark, no it's not a sweet feeling. I scrub and scrub and scrub, the sink, the chair, the rancid leather jacket, but no matter what we can never be even, you said so yourself. Isn't karma just one big royal bitch? To be blunt, why am I hand cleaning chunks of puke off your leather jacket anyways? Wipe off, brush on baking soda, brush off. Why can't cleaning up the mess in my head be this cut and dry? To answer my own questions, it is because I want you in my debt, just once, instead of the other way around.

When I think of them I think of hood rats, street kids, packs of wild animals that run around at night, so far under the influence. You growled, with your teeth bared and your lips twisted into a laughing sneer, you are the influence you snarl. That made a light smile scamper across my face. You were as docile and patient as a sunbathing lion, at worst, an irked cub; assuming more ferocity and strength than you possessed. Any influence or ferocity you once possessed was long gone under blurred edges and sun faded streaks.

  I’ve been having these dreams. Ones where I wake up with a strangers hands still gripped tightly around my neck. Ones where nameless shadows hunt me down with the pure intention of killing me slowly and painfully. Ones where I am running and running and running but the walls stretch out and the doors lead nowhere and I wake up in a cold, warn out, sweat. Ones where small children with ghoulish eyes follow me with stares and threats of what will come when, one day, they are stronger than me. Worse than all of these are those dreams where I am back in time, to where I want to be. I wake up with an ignorant smile and the taste of a golden warm glow in my mouth only to have it fade to bitter realization as the rocks pile up in my stomach with the familiar feeling of sinking nostalgia.

I remember the first time we walked together, a backdrop of twinkling christmas lights. The second time we waked on that warm, june day, I had been passed off to you like a baton; here take her to your house until I can come back. You led the way the whole 35 blocks, I had no idea where I was going, I didn't even know you, but I followed, trusting you to know the way. That was the day I started believing that you would lead me, and you did, all summer.

You know the old saying good things come in threes? Well if that's true, I’m shit out of luck. I got my luck times three and a half, so that just puts me back in a dangerous debt. It is more than I could have ever hoped for, but less than I want. All it did was open me up, cut right through the rib cage and turn me into a black hole. What I want and what I can have are polar opposites, and how can you chose where you want to go when you’re being pulled two ways down two paths until your rib cage splits in half and you're going nowhere?

One. How late (or I guess early, it was sunday already) it was when we started talking. What you said sent me into a furry of breaking pencils and ripping paper; anything to keep my hands busy and my eyes dry. Hindsight hits me like a bullet every damn time. Yes, I do want to talk, and I don't think i’ve ever heard such sweet words before. Isn't it ironic that the words that made me fold two months ago are what’s fixing me now? We talked until six am, until the sun streamed through the windows. I cried and cried and cried. You told me a story about a gun, and I told you something i’ve never told anybody; the one secret that was never meant to be told. But we fell asleep on the braided ruck listening to soft singing through shitty headphones. I forgot about everything bad; the suppressed childhood scars and the more recent, raw wounds. The floor was rock hard, but I was comfortable again. Two. The number of fireworks that were set off in a moment of blind stupidity that can only be found in numbers. We ran, twisting and turning through the black and green and brown of the city of roses. Two. The time on the chipped 7-11 clock, when your food stamps didn't work and I bough the bitter candies. Sour like the radioactive drinks we got on that day that seemed so long ago and we walked home in the velvety night. Your arms around me, I have never felt more at home in my life. The red apple in snow white seemed so sweet and perfect, but it was poisonous too. Three. The number of people I was with that night. The first one brought me to tears and left a mark I couldn't get rid of for a week and a flushed burn on my cheeks the colour of shame.  The second, with the help of the self appointed white night, spun me to you. Next came the perfect alcove of the kaleidoscope room, with an intrusion and a cat whose place I stole next to you. The half came in the form of a half bad night. I locked myself out of the house just to run past her accusing, false words. I Stormed inside and made a phone call to a sympathetic ear “im going to beat her up” I spin around, and wonder why they don't even need to be breathing to be trapped by her. We have that talk, the one sided me-talking-at-you talk you don't want to hear as much as I don't want to say. Everything turns around when I walk you off. We link arms and stop to take a break on a dumpster couch on the side of the road. I send you off with your ticket and a whirled confused goodbye. You send me off with a worried warning about getting home safe. Worried or not, either way, when I walked home, I did it alone.

Surrounded by faces i didn’t know, no introductions were made, we spun to the empty parking lot. I was scooped up by 4 arms that belonged to 2 strangers and a third rode his bike at me at full speed. In a moment of slowed down realization, it hit me like, well a bike, that here is where i belonged. The bike swerved off last second, and i am still here to tell the tale. These long ago strangers are now people i see every chance i get to steal away to the north, where i feel most comfortable. These strangers took just a sunny afternoon, and easy laugh, and an open mind to fit right in with them. I remember that day in a streaks of sunbeams and flashes of faces; a swirl of red hair and freckles, a long pony tail and a smug expression, a hawk nose and suntanned skin, glasses and a bored saunter.