Musings

 Rives makes me scream!

I was lying in the backseat, reading my book
and I fell asleep to the sound of
the air conditioner on full blast and the
rain slapping the windshield.
The colors in my dreams were 
faded and old.

     Fire drill. We quickly reported to the dumpsters. Everyone stood in clusters while I faced away, wishing it were winter. In front of me: tall, tall grass in the distance. A naked sky, blushing blue. A telephone pole closer to me, I was focusing on its long shadow and thinking about how to measure the earth with two sticks when I noticed movement on the aforementioned shadow. As if the telephone pole had suddenly grown a hand just to wave at me, briefly. I pulled my eyes away from its dark, gray soul to glance at the very real, solid, wooden structure in front of me. And it was there that my exploring eyes found a bird. Fluttering and looking annoyed as can be. Maybe from the stench, maybe from the noisy kids below. Gray and white bird. I saw a golden flash at the corner of my eyes. Not the sun, not a camera, not lightning but a cat. A collared, yellow striped cat leaping in and out of a ditch. Friends? Conspiracy theory.

     If I am still a child, why do I feel so old? If I am so ancient, why do I feel like a little girl?    

     When I am old, I really am. I feel like I’ve been alive for centuries. I feel so weary that I can barely stand. Everything is still just as wonderful and beautiful but it is also familiar. The shock and awe of the beauty is all but gone. When I am old, Heaven is an endless, dreamless sleep.

     When I am young, I truly am. A fidgeting, reckless child. I am powerful, I am everything. The fancy twists and twirls of a pineapple can entertain me for hours. I am ready to love, play, and experience. Ready for the world. When I am young, there is no heaven. For I, Lolli, am immortal.

     I lift my face up the sun and let my eyes close. Bright red light penetrates my eyelids and seeps into my brain. Flooding my mind with images of bloody battlefields, tomato soup, and burning crimson roses. Though the heat is making me weary, I force my eyes open and stare straight into the Sun’s face. Challenging it. My mind jumps around my memory and draws out images of sunflowers, classroom walls, and pissed-in snow. It hurts but I will not look away. It kills but I can not look away. It burns and my eyeballs are gone and there is nothing but flame where they used to live.

And now I am blind. And now I am done.

     It’s winter and the trees are bare. Their many gray branches, no longer hidden by full and generous leaves, look mutilated and gnarled. Lonely and desperate. The hundreds of little twigs at the very tops of the larger branches look like hungry, needy fingers. What is it that you’re searching for, curious little fingers?     

     Is it shelter? Is it hope? Lean over and whisper it in my ear.

     This is what I’ve been looking for. A clean, simple, neat, easy way to blog. I think I had something else to say about it but my mind seems to have come to a halt.