Sitting in the shoe store alone, I’m getting that absent feeling of two a.m. where you know the rest of the world has mostly gone to bed. The only clock is on the computer desktop, but I can’t escape the impression of ticking, like I should know how to play piano to explain myself. I think of brickwork, of his hands on the keys and on my back, the way he kissed me as if drowning were the way to go. I remember a lot of things and wonder how much of it is important. I should send him a letter. I should send more people writing. I suppose this is my version of dwelling on mortality, mourning for the people I love that are too inaccessible for me to tell them so.
I don’t think I could put their skills and talent in my freezer. I’m not big enough for that. My family outshines me more than singing for the joy of it. Me, it’s sun outside and I feel like I need a raincoat. I seem strewn into limbo. My feet are pulling me forward on habit alone. People on the street and I’m waiting for them to stop talking and begin using their heads. Waiting and losing time, staring into the sky for an unrecalled twenty minutes, losing my soul to a string of other people’s glorious smiles. My voice is dying, trapped in the amber of a summer I don’t remember enough of, trapped by a time that never came because it’s a film-strip of memories, days and evenings and too many transient whispers.
Boys calling on the phone and asking for improbable sizes. “Do you have red boots in size 15? I want something slinky.” Boys who sound similar to friends but not quite, enough to pause me a second more, stutter my voice and steal my certainty. I’m abandoning my faith, you see. Rolling up the primrose path and trying to be with someone I’m not in love with. It’s a first, but I’m too exhausted. Maybe it’s time to be like everyone else.
