it's eleven thirty and some change
if my life was a day
My mind struggles to wrap itself around its own mortality.
It is a slimy, pink mess of knotted neurons and jumbled lobes. It cannot imagine that its shrivel and shrink, its evanescence, is imminent as moonrise. At worst, it can hope to float in a jar on some shelf somewhere, and at best, maybe dissolve into a fine sand, eventually feed an ant colony, or harden to stone. Both scenarios hurt the same.
I feel every tick of my thirty years and one hundred and four days (one hundred and seven by the time you read this). At least half a life looms ahead of me if I’m one of the lucky ones. (So far, I have been.) Even still, it’s already all so…much.
Nevertheless, I was taught to dilute, simplify, when staring into the smug face of overwhelm. To fractionate the big numbers into dwarf-sized ones, split the decades into years, the years into months, and so on. If I water down my big, ebullient life into a day — where does the sun sit in the sky?
Right now, it’s eleven thirty and some change. Noon remains a promise. The sky is bloated with clouds and stubborn sun, throwing that light that makes for stunning photographs. A whit of wind tousles my hair, already streaked with shining silver; a few strands stick to my lips and I flick them away. It is not cold enough for a coat. My feet long to be bare, to grip and paw the damp earth below, but alas, the workday has just begun.
Focus eludes me. The air carries a cacophony of scent: eucalyptus and ash, garbage and barbecue, gasoline and maple syrup. Delight and horror share tenancy in my chest. I still don’t know the right way to feel.
I’ve already forgotten breakfast. My thoughts wander to a greasy lunch, to a fancy dinner, to a midnight snack, though I am neither hungry nor deserving of my next meal. Some would call me gluttonous; they’d be right to do so.
Noise is everyplace.
Sometimes I miss the quiet of a younger morning, but the people all around with their buzzes and hisses, giggles and tuts, hollers and sighs — there’s a rhythm to it. My own laughter dissolves into the smog of sound. I think I’ve grown enamored with the jazz of it all.
About an hour and a half ago, I met someone new. We locked our fingers together like blackberry bramble and decided to spend the rest of the day together, despite the sky’s threats to rupture. Already, I feel warmer.
On my walk, I zag around discarded needles, limp legs, and broken hearts. Do you remember what it felt like when your first dream splintered to shreds? A skyscraper casts a shadow across the pavement, dark as an ultimatum. I cross the street.
The sleeve of my viridian sweater is damp with salt. I’ve been crying since I awoke and I doubt that I will ever stop. Like the “onlys” — only once? only once? — the tears range from celebratory to sorrowful. At the beginning of the day, I made a pact with myself to write it all down and I’m glad. It reads back like a psalm.
Wonder is what keeps me going. When will my feet know the grass? What’s for dessert? Will the clouds disperse, or will they burst wide and wet? Just then, the clock chimes with a vow of something better.
I take out my pen again, sneak a snack. The day expands, and I with it.
Dear reader, what hour of life are you in?
