the conundrum of tomorrow
or, a feeble attempt at putting july into words
Home has always been shaped like a question.
All month, I’ve fallen asleep with hyperbole tucked beneath my soft chin. (She snores.) There are holes in the blanket. Things have been the best and the hardest and the sweetest and the worst, woooooorst, worst. Some moons I rock myself to sleep, and some nights I leave it to another to do the wildly impractical work of calming me.
There’s only one life, all the talks of paths and YOLO, and whether it be Drake or e.e. cummings, there is a human consensus and begrudging acceptance that we only get to do (*gestures vaguely*) this the lonely, singular time.
That — the one path, two path, red path, blue path — or whatever — is difficult to accept. Much like my writing practice, my imagined life must be perfect if it is to ever exist.
(It remains imperfect.)
And so in the meantime, I’ve set up shop in limbo: somewhere between the the proverbial concrete jungle and the cool, bosky one. I keep it quiet on purpose. There is a point where even music becomes too much, too memoric, too opinionated. The silence hums, lush with potential.
When there is spare time, I knit a blanket. I’m no good with needles, so of course there are big holes and also small holes, but is a handspun life blanket not more joyfilled than a borrowed one?
And are we not on borrowed time anyway?
I go to the grocery store to remember what it’s like to be me. I leave with jarred artichokes, dark chocolate, pistachios, Slim Jims. When I get back to the apartment that is not mine, I drop the groceries at the door and take seventy-nine selfies in the mirror to prove that I was here, in this particular bathroom, with this particular peachy tile, with the sconce reflecting on my left shoulder just so. I remember that I am here and I remember that I am beautiful.
Have people forgotten that Vanity and Memory are sisters? Maybe I am their third, a bastard.
The skyline is jagged and bright.
I’d sworn off cities, and she knows that, so she pulls out all the stops, twinkles and beeps with told you so. I leave another strange apartment post-dark, alone and on purpose. Rare, like this heatwave. I remember how to take the bus, tugging on the filthy noodle to trigger a stop. (Make it stop!) It feels good to be in control again, if only for a tick.
I get to the place and shove through the door like winter wind. Abrupt. Loudly.
No one knows me and it’s positively thrilling. I give fake names at the bars, spin lavish tales for Uber drivers, get high. I wear the same shirt twice in a row and sob on the train and dance to reggaeton with my floppy webbed feet. I almost squeak out big words to describe my bigger feelings, but I suck them in (along with my belly in the bikini that now, somehow, fits).
I wear heels. I smash on lipstick, plummy purple like old bruises. I scrawl fuck you in green Sharpie on the coffee shop’s bathroom stall. My ankles crack. My eyebrows gray. I bleed through the sheets and spin luck like yarn.
No one knows me and it breaks my heart.
I’ve been complaining again. About my family and the administration™ and the weather and my decisions, in equal parts.
“You sound like a bomb,” this girl tells me.
I take a swig of warm white wine from a mason jar and wince like I was slapped.
It’s a Saturday afternoon when I realize that I’ve forgotten how to cook. Which knob does what on the stove, how much sugar constitutes a pinch, the smoking point of avocado oil. I dump a packageful of baby spinach into the pan and watch, dumbfounded, as it shrivels to nothing. Disappointing. Nonetheless, these things can be relearned. Sanity can’t.
I try swatting the humidity away like a housefly. Instead I end up wearing it like an apron, awkward and unwillingly, in the tiny, wet kitchen. Sweat drips from my nosebridge into the leafy green lump on the stove, and I think, maybe that’s enough salt.
I chuckle and cough up a handful of ash.
Once upon a time, I was sober. I paraded around rooms boasting mocktails like small trophies. “Oh this?,” I’d fake slur (‘cause I missed it, the slurring). Just juice, tonic water, herbs. Yeah, seriously! It’s hard, but you get used to it. I feel so much better. And my skiiiiin! (I got a thrill out of everyone cooing over me like a new, slimy zoo calf. It was better than the mephitic buzz of alcohol.)
Now, I drink again. And often. Brown, and white, and clarified. I look for other ways to impress, like a clown with a briefcase. My purse, too, is leaden with things that I cannot throw away.
Case in point: Last night I tried paying for dinner with an old hotel room key.
“Silly girl,” snickered the waiter.
“You have no idea,” I wanted to say. But instead I said, “Sorry, it’s just been such a long day week life time. I’m trying my best.”
And, my god, I think he was impressed.
(Just write something, anything!)
I meet a man who’s been in prison longer than I’ve had a heartbeat. The neon sign above reflects red off his black skin like a curse. He tells me that today, this horrid, scorching day, is the first day that he’s even considered tomorrow. Maybe he’ll eat a hot dog, eat it in the grass, he says. “It’s been a while,” he chokes.
I join him.
We lay down, look up. The sky promises a storm and nothing more. Maybe that’s enough.
