I sit and cease to exist until the quiet hours of the morning thrust me back into warped existence. Covered in the mucus of structured work and destination. It is foolish to think I am the first to tear through this banner... after all did not Shakespeare at some point litter his own floors with crumpled up pieces of paper? The difference is that my demons lie below me in the PVC pipes and his were right there in the lines of scrawled ink.
Is this what evolution has prepared me for? Escaping into a mirage of painted symphonies and walking the dog? At some point I start to wonder when the hurricane is coming, just so I can ignore the danger and taste the rain. I keep putting on an extra layer, leaving the light on at night, as if growing up is a crumpled check I forget to cash. And now:
A Few of My Favorite Things
- Getting back in the car after filling the tank up. alllllll the way up.
- Grilled cheese for breakfast
- Snow, for god's sake, this was the oddest winter ever. While 2011 went through puberty one of the reasons I actually like Massachusetts was invalidated. I WANT SNOW.
- Climbing stairs. I don't know?
It's coming down stairs that freak me out.
It was one of those stupid moments in which two people are approaching each other and neither person knows which way to go. I dodged and she stumbled around me. My teeth started to form "Sorry" but something about the situation stopped me. I stopped moving altogether and glanced in her direction. Late 40s, short, stocky. She trudged around the carpet in large galoshes and hid her brow under a knit cap, soggy from the rain. A ragged coat hung around her body. It looked as if it failed to keep any cold out. I struggled to see her face more closely but wasn't invested enough to care. She was carrying a backpack in one hand and a large drawing pad in the other. Homeless? Not frequent enough in this town to be a definitive explanation. Suspicion and paranoia bristled on my neck. I put my hands into my coat pockets and shrugged.
I was barreling down the stairs minutes later when I saw her again, this time from the back. She had planted herself right in the middle one of the steps. I saw that what she was still clutching wasn't a drawing pad at all, but a white rubber bathmat. The before encounter still chilled my core. I swallowed hard and spun on my heels to escape the way I came but she craned her neck around to look at me before I could get away. I could feel beady eyes slicing into me like a laser cutter. Her wrinkled cheeks looked weighed down with years of neglect, and her eyes were as yellow as her finger nails.
"Excuse me," I said, leaping over her bag onto the following step. Almost out, I thought, few more steps.
"Cold hands?" she gestured to my pockets, still filled with my clenched fingers. Her voice was wet and smokey. I wondered if she had been drinking the rainwater.
"Uh, yeah," I smiled politely, avoiding eye contact.
"Or a weapon..."
I was already down the hall. My anxiety was spiked and this last comment propelled me past being rational. Did she really think I had a gun in my coat pocket... Maybe I should start carrying one.
