Sometimes I just can’t help myself. These tiny little things are just so strange, and I don’t want to forget… what it’s like. The curiousness we hold in all these empty spaces. And the subtlety of language, when it’s new.
When we were kids we used to say, “I’m going to die by the time I’m 25, and not a day too late.” You chose the city streets, knife fights and police sirens. My own Dallas fucking Winston. Bang. Bang. I chose razor blades, sleeping pills, cheap whiskey and infatuation. I still have the scars; my legs, wrists, and liver. I still remember how romantic… how tragic we seemed. Seventeen. Young, dumb, and…. total fucking dirtbags.
I started a new story, and I am sure it will go unfinished. Why can’t I commit to an idea and let it play out at the tips of my fingers? Maybe I am a ruined woman, in every single sense and facet. Maybe I just don’t know what it is I really want to say. Maybe I am scared to say it.
did i pack away the pictures?
or did the wind take them with the roof?
you know i’ll never see you again…
if that’s really the case.
i’ll never fucking see you again.
i remember having a willow tree. solid and strong and in the exact center of our front yard. i remember gazing dreamily at my older brother lying limp like a ragdoll kitten allowing the branches to cradle him. i remember the old knotted rope which would dance wildly during a bout of wind, but held our weight as we swung across the yard in our barefeet. i remember the bees and the lizards, the shape of the leaves and the rough of the bark, and i remember the soft rays of sunlight penetrating the canopy as i would stare up from my bed of grass and dirt. i remember the mourning cloaks, the red admirals, and the monarchs hovering softly in the shade. i remember when our willow began to die. the tree shed most of it’s bark, leaving open wounds of oozing sap that would trap the travelling butterflies. i remember thinking i could save a stranded monarch who was flapping desperately with one wing, which ripped in my little fingers. i remember crying for the butterfly, and again when the chainsaws came. they left the little stump for a few months. like a statue of a fallen soldier where we could sit and bake in the sun, and realize there would be no more barefoot days in the arms of our willow tree.
