Life Billows
June 19, 2018
Time is something that speeds by on a billion schedules, and patterns its way around the world in an interactive lacy web. Life billows. I get tired easily and right now I’m busy imagining the reality of slitting my wrists. I’m scared. I’m this tired because I hardly eat. Also, my brain has stopped functioning, which is exhausting. For once, this isn’t on purpose. I haven’t killed the soldiers in my mind, I haven’t blasted them with shotguns full of vodka and bullets of xanax. I haven’t made it to the store yet, Jerry. I haven’t made it anywhere at all. I have a past. Once, I had a mother and a father and a sister. I never knew my sister, but I heard she was a perfect baby. I had a first husband. They’re all dead. Ken’s dead, too. Today, Koko died. I wish I could drive by Koko’s home in Woodside, like I did every day when I lived as her neighbor. I wish I could see her old home, I wish I could see my old home, I wish I could see where my memories were born.
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I am overwhelmed, usually because I’m on the floor, and everything is tall. I’m so hungry that when I try to eat I just puke. My throat and my fingers have been on a break. I feel like I’m washing away. I feel like a melting pile of snow. I feel like I should be in the forest, climbing redwood trees. I feel like I need a nap but I can’t sleep. I want to die. I want to live. I want to live a different life. I want to write something good. I want to write it well.
But I don’t know what good is, and things are never well enough for some people. I want to stop dwelling in the comprehensive state of my racing pulse, my speeding heartbeat. My mother’s voice.
I want to see flowers. I want to feel warm water. I want to feel waves crashing against my back. I feel stupid. I feel smart. Do I feel smart because I’m so stupid? “Feelings” are supposed to be shown, not told, when writing. I want to feel happy. I want to eat. I want to know. I want my hair to not fall out. I need a break. I need a brain. I want a break that lasts me the rest of my life and beyond. I don’t want to remember being eight years old with my gymnastic teacher’s hands in my pants. I’ve been working for something since I could walk to school by myself. I want my hair back. I want my life back. I want a sandwich. I want ice-cream. I want to eat without guilt. I want to sleep. Forever. I want to live happily. Indefinitely. I want to hold my newborn son, every one of these days. I want to be in love and mean it. I want to hide in a lake. I want to hide with fish. I want to write about people who exist, and who are good. Instead I’m swimming fiercely in shallow water. My knees hit rocks. I taste blood. I remember the metallic, plastic, blasting sound of my typewriter smashing cement after I threw it over my balcony. Little brown buttons with letters in a dark courier font splattered the ground. H and I, two stated. But it wasn’t my patio — this patio. It was the concrete out at 2184. That was my patio. I don’t remember this address — I need to have it written down and within reach at all times. But I know 2184 was my last home.
When the typewriter hit the concrete, the black ribbon spool still pressed against paper. After it thudded, I remember brown leaves drifting around my brown typewriter, like ballerinas, floating in the blasted dust. I want to see the brown leaves drifting across the scuffled concrete of my patio. I want to look between the brown patio stairs and see the ground. I want to hear the shuffling sound of shoes as people walk on the other side of the fence, unaware of what they’re missing over here. The others are lucky. They don’t miss my memories of son. They don’t miss — anything.
