why? i don’t know why. why because i thought that life was meant to crawl into. i thought the pretty things were just that. i thought sadness was something you go in and out of, like an indoor pool. because air tells me things, because i read too many stories when i was little. because the same songs kept playing, because those songs were somehow both very serious and not, because things are never not way too quiet or too loud. i can count all the little trips into forests not on one hand but on two and each trip was just that and i don’t know if they were worth this but they were worth something. i remember one well, alone in the woods, the sun sharply, marvelously scraping at the corners of everything around. i found so many things. i found a small ceramic white bowl, the size of a peach, like a teacup for a small creature or a bath for a bird. i took it home with me and washed it and i still have it in a plastic bag in my closet. it felt important. “its a wonderful life” by sparklehorse was playing on my ipod when i found it and everything just felt so important. i don’t know if that means it really was but i don’t think it matters. why because i worry the ocean is very very tired. i know it never stops so i thought why should i? because my brain and voice both felt sticky like the tip of a ball point pen. because i missed every room i ever grew up in and i wanted to be in all of them again at the same time. because there were parades inside my heart. because when i was small i’d love to always look inside peoples windows on walks, i liked the outsides of apartments and brownstones and then i realized the windows were always actually inside me. you ask me if i’m okay and it’s not that i’m not.
This article appears in July 2013.
