Remember the sun waking you up in the morning? Earlier than you would have liked, menacingly coasting along your face. You would squint, and crinkle your nose before the castle in the air, would admit itself as the reality of your brittle cracked ceiling. Sometimes it would be plain sailing, hinting promise, and day full of adventure. With dotted lined men seated patiently in rocking chairs, and stretched blue arms reaching for limbs, scurrying up concrete driveways. Other times, the enveloping dog days would pressure the sweat right out of your pores. Maybe your parents could not afford air conditioning, or were far too accustomed to old fashioned living, so as to shun the technological simplicities. An attribute to despise at the time, but to later respect. I don`t forgive you for not knowing how to contact me through a communications network, I admire you for it.
There was never only one in boxed dwelling, there were a few. Not that you couldn't separate one from the other, but it was taxing digging into latent conditions, branching in several bodies. Hard to decipher what was what. But, there were always tell tale signs. Like baby locks beaming surely at all the soft white heavens had to offer. Reaching for whatever was reachable, and then even more. Bursting boldly, dividing pleasures, wonders, and tricycle scrapes. Or the coffee brown of uneven strings curling in every direction, unowned, and no ones. Counting to later in second hand reflections, storing ambitions, and dashed hopes in the back of family portraits. An esoteric world of obscuring layers, where thick murk muffled the cursing, hating, and the wanting. Still, twin visions fail to part ways on some parallel journey, to where other worlds were just over the brushing hills. To seek them desperately, tearing floral cushions, and squeezing behind love seats, in our torn baby pink t-shirts.
Remember when you had a whole day ahead of you? It all seemed so stretched, and everlasting. Weaving baskets on dirt mansions, in our year long summers. Incomplete, and 2 dimensional in a cozy winters blanket. The cold was just a push down the hills, and into the brushes of excitement. Burying frogs, and family dogs, and getting screamed at for filthy fingernails. While your heroes snuck behind red prison blocks, holding basketballs, and cigarettes. You would taste the secrets, and cough incessantly, vowing to never dabble in the amusements of seeming wisdom. Christmas trees on planks, in the woods by the river. Where soon to be captive daddy long legs frolicked in their eyeless freedom. Crushing sip sacks, and exchanging broken candy canes in temporary closeness. Night would paint the skies in deep blues, while twinkling yellows lured helium balloons out of reluctant mini grasps.
The witches were in fact real, we`d later learn. They just wore silly hats, and green paint on Halloween. As for the shivering, sing low of ghosts, Well it`s said to be cold in the after life. But, we didn't consider these things, cowering behind tree trunks the size of jack`s beanstalk. The fearful ones at least. The brave would trail triumphantly, right into the hands of Parkinson's disease. Only to march down hills, sacs heavy full of apples, and copper coins. Don`t eat that it`ll spoil your appetite. I didn't know we had an appetite to spoil, Always too busy chasing spring, and counting away love on dandelion petals, to think about pots boiling on stove tops. Much closer than the tilting towers threatening downfall with illusions, still, far less intimidating.
Remember colossal weight carrying you away? Leaving behind the old cassettes, and scattered freckles. Windows captured still images of confused goodbyes, and promised returns to the fiery red of bedhead. Sure, anxious determination drove straight through decks, tearing down years of cracked blue/green paint, But It was still much bigger afterwords. Larger than the cold steel railings, dividing years of grassy green simplicity. The floorboards would still leave your feet cold, but somehow it can be different. Things start to look smaller, the brushing hills seem a whole lot closer than we had ever imagined. With summer, so brief in it`s gentle caress, evoking brief memories in a swift passing whisper.
Honey coated bodies buzz around your dizzy head, taking advantage of screen-less windows. Jutting wings flutter into poorly ventilated apartments. Suspended, as though they`re right where they belong, maybe they are. And there is still so much more, of less to come. It all changes, baby blond submerges in a dispersed sandy blanket, and bright smiles contort into sick lips curled around cigarettes. We finally reach the later we have been counting to. It`s just what we had hoped for, dreamed for. And if we had known the vanity of our stored ambitions, we may very well have spent far more time rolling down the dusty hills of youth, and smoking cheap cigarettes with our heroes.
© Carla, 2011
