I have software on my computer that dims the light of my screen to a more pleasant warmth and colour when the sun sets. It is supposed to make me sleep better, possibly, but that hasn’t worked. I never got it for that purpose anyway, so it’s no great loss. I like the wash of warm orange yellow that slowly settles on my screen as I sit alone in my darkened room.
The red and white beach blanket I got two Christmases ago has been spread out on my carpet all this week. My makeshift beach. Sometimes the bed just isn’t enough. On my terry-cloth island I can lie nude and paint, but when my limbs skim the beige carpet that surrounds the borders, I pick up all my shed hair. It’s all very flawed, but it’s what I have.
Today I sat under someone’s tree in a public park and listened to her put her secrets in front of me on the grass. We looked off into the distance and suffered some not entirely uneasy silences, I focused on her staccato “like’s” but also on what I can say, what I can possibly say to help. There is a noisy seagull that paces around us, and I am not ashamed to say I threw a small twig at it that hit it right in the face. I kept saying, “I mean…” What do I mean?
In the past few days my life has gotten full enough of events that I was compelled to buy a new planner to replace the old one. When things get slow, I can fill the pages with poetry, just like I do in my lived life.
My cousin got married in the past month, an email from my father told me. On the grass we spoke of our parents – mothers, fathers – and our families. We spoke of blackmail. We spoke of worth. The way we cannot choose who comes out of us, and who we come from. The blood line of rot and regret. The blood line of obligation and duty. Love. We spoke of love.
On my beach towel, I lie on my stomach and scroll through my cousin’s wedding photos on Facebook. On a separate tab there is a photo of my little sister who will turn 12 in thirteen days. I almost did not recognize her. All the things I am coming home to, and all the things that crumbled and slept and died while I was gone. I am nostalgic for the concept of family and for a moment feel terribly alone as a member of this unit, trudging along through the years, losing pieces. I think of the strict fence I have put around my own Facebook profile, to keep out my family. I think of how I can look through this window into their lives, and the imbalance of that.
It’s all fleeting, this desire, the reaching out of fingers to glass. This life of mine has morphed so unrecognizably from the little girl they all knew. Maybe I am saving us all the shock.
