Drive by

"What was a fat child in 1940's New York without her kazoo?" -Emma Forrest

Let me be the first to break your spine and leave pieces of me in your various folds.
The stamp reads today's date and it's typeface makes me miss every night I unintentionally spent with my steel-gray type writer.
I could scrawl my name onto you, like personal property, were this another time.
It's sad to think how modern everything has become.
Instead our moments will be private; all the idiosyncratic gestures you evoke seen only by passing strangers and bitten coffee stirrers.
When I read, I can never quite comprehend what constitutes the end.

When I close my eyes, the clarity is blinding.
We're past all comfortable reference points, ones we lived so hard to discover.
Two tall boys, empty as discarded beer bottles.
The want that remains is salt on open flesh, unfashionably gaping.
What created the hangover which we have accepted to wake with;
Both, with hands that continue vain attempts at rubbing faulted feelings away?
I cannot say.
I'm too far away.

OH, the stories I blindly stumble into.

 

I awoke on Monday in Geneseo, after another daycation. They've become more frequent than my nasty nail biting habit. The weather had just been pumped up more than the macho muscle men of South Beach. I sweat my way back to Davenport with intentions on job hunting hard, only after showering at the Davenport "home." What I didn't expect was the letter sitting on the key stand telling me only that our landlord hadn't been able to sign my letter to the SCC Registrar and that I "should find another place to live." Period. I stood to soak it in for a few seconds, past my sweaty skin and into the depths of my hot, hot head. I wasn't going to be showering, dressing up in professional clothes, or living in Davenport any longer. I went upstairs to my bedroom and looked it over, realizing the extent of my attempts to make that room feel like some kind of a home. I plotted. I packed. I pulled out boxes. I did not think. I merely reacted. I knew I wasn't going to try and push this issue with stupid heart to heart conversations or gut-wrenching compromise. I wanted out more than I ever had and I didn't care that out meant moving back into my parents house for the fifth or sixth time. I lost all track.

It took three trips in total, with my gas/oil guzzling non-air conditioned van. I sweat out more than I have in years. My face was slick like a glossy photograph and it didn't matter that I was offered no explanations. My parents were protective and full of hugs when they learned of my homecoming after my second trip to unload, from my van, all the various heavy boxes I haven't unpacked since I packed them up in September of 2010. I wondered the whole time what it was I kept lugging around and why, if I didn't use them on an day to day basis. Probable tea pots, coffee mugs, ash trays: things I bought on impulse back when I had hundreds lying around, even after purchasing ounces of pot; twelve packs of specialty beer samplers. It's amazing, the feeling of even thinking back to such a lifestyle; the reason I keep the possessions I do.

I went back for my final trip. Picked up my Barcelona chairs, a lonely orange bar stool and the air conditioning unit I so loved turning on just because I knew she had no control over it or me touching it. There was a note saying something like she doesn't know what happened to me and she hopes I get better and how I'm welcome to visit or stay the night if I choose to do so at some point in the future. I wanted to flaunt the hypocrisy but I did not. I simply wrote out a plain note telling of my struggles with depression over work and school trouble. That I was sorry if she couldn't understand my vantage point. That I didn't know I was indentured to a certain amount of time spent with her merely due to our living situation. That I was thankful for what she had done for me. And Finally: "Happy Trails... until we meet again." I am not going to be the lesser person by lashing out with anger.That doesn't mean I didn't give that dog a good, hard kick in the ass before leaving my key and locking the door behind me. That yelp was the best sound I've heard continue past it's spoiled, black lips. 

That was my yesterday. Today is new and I am full of vigor. I don't need to live in Davenport to be happy. I have my place and I'm keeping it until I'm through with my first degree or until I have a job that is solid enough to pursue the luxury of finding a space of my own. A space where I never have to entertain fantasies of drowning a yapping dog in the bathrub, feel an obligation to wash the floors weekly, curse because toothpaste isn't properly washed down the bathroom sink and most importantly, make mistakes; be flawed without having that lurking feeling that I might possibly be told so.

Portrait of Man on Yellow Schwinn