As I reached my arm around the awkward angle of the half opened french closet doors, groping my hand around a dark small space, running fingers over various cotton blends and fabrics, socks, something lace covered, something smooth, and then something...something different.
It was November and her eyes twinkled, but not because of joy...the tear stains left her face streaked just faintly enough to notice if he stood under the neon light and looked for it, by morning's first rays he could see them a little clearer, but by then she was somewhat sober in her emotions, at least weary from a night walking, a night singing- pumping fists in the air...the neighbors if they heard surely never said word, they were but foreigners in dirt roads, marking the train station and hoping for some kind of answer to fix the aches.
Pulling them out and shaking them loose, my face twisted into my crooked uneasy smile, and yet there was a wave of relief as I unwrapped the forgotten present, and I see it as just that. "Merry Christmas," I murmur under my breath, as I slip out my shoes and pull down my jeans, slipping each leg through the baggy remains of a warm welcome that awaited me one day in ...what month was that? November?
It was December and she hit her head on the loft roof as she struggled out of the tangle and murmured about lesson plans undone and of trains that would run to slow and maybe she should just call in...and he called out to see if her head was okay, but she was already slippery and sleek halfway out the door and leaving him wondering when she'd be back. And yet when he arrived it was always in chaos, loud and chattering, halfway out of breath and pulling her from warmth and dreams of home and into the hilarity and adventure, but she was unaffected and if anything soothed more by the madness because she was cold externally but in her heart warm and childlike to the hands that wound around her as they chatted about boy things and she didn't mind the interruption of sleep.
They still fit, I don't remember pockets...so deep, I do remember these. Though they had been pressed and folded over for so long, they easily worked themselves into the comfortable well hung and worn softness that made them so likable the first time. Maybe it was June, or no...more like March when they were mine. And though they fray at the ends, they still hang just below my knee and despite gaining weight since then they fit loose and I feel thin...
It was January and she had expired. She never knew a song could come down and sing so beautifully a situation into being until that crisp, cold morning where the sun lit the world on fire and her heart was loud and somewhere in her mouth, rattling between her teeth, though she found the courage to pray. He said goodbye again in on a time out on the court, and she wondered if he was good at the game or if he just was that other sort. She watched the colors change and rearrange before her as the map folded and she traveled through the rabbit hole, soon to be leaning on clothing racks again, soon to be sipping on drinks to large, soon to be behind the wheel of a car and bumper to bumper in a city that now felt truly foreign, except now she wasn't the foreign one.
"I'll wear them to sleep", I declare to the air, and my voice feels hollow and misplaced as I talk in the old house of wooden floors to myself...and in a few days, I think silently, if the world keeps spinning and the heart keeps pumping, then maybe they'll see another year, and who really knows what adventures that will bring?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment