Alone/Alive

Amy puts it best, I guess, and sometimes I wish she wouldn't so I could sleep. Or so I could act naive and tell myself if I listen to country and drink the right amount of coffee that I can be happy, but I'm like the title to someone else's autobiography. Vertigo. Illusions of movement. Tilting. Spinning. I'm sitting on the rocks down by a Silver Lake that looks nothing like a necklace from Tiffany and Co and the river glides by me silently. I can't tell if the geese are swimming or being carried or maybe I'm not sitting and I'm running past them. An old man on a bicycle approaches, but he must have mistaken me for someone else.

On the phone with you and I can hear the click of a lighter in the background. You pause before you answer because you're dragging from a Newport and I don't ask if you're still there, because I can make out your heavy exhale. The background noise is thick where you are and I can hardly pull your voice from what seems like a torrent of rain falling around you. It sounds like your mouth is full or you're talking through a wall to me, and maybe you are. I'm still waiting for you to respond I think, but it's been a few weeks.

The air feels like rain could condense into my eyebrows and my sisters are eighteen and someone called me a man today while I was trying my best to act like I was looking for a girlfriend. And of course you're not here and I make twenty calls while I'm sitting by the river and no one answers and everyone calls back, but I don't feel like talking anymore. I watch my phone backlight slide back into darkness, embracing three missed calls and a text message I never meant to answer. Oh okay.

The clouds spider their fingers around the horizon and it feels like the sun is setting in a time lapse video because I've only been propped up here for an hour but it's already dark.

There is little I can say about the teenagers riding past me on three Magnas and a Huffy. Someone walks two dogs and I'm wearing green and my eyes feel bloodshot. And I'm the only one not holding something or someone and two women embrace and I think I caught myself smiling, but it was the sad sort of smile you give someone at a funeral or a memorial service because you recognize the flinching in their eyes but can't think of anything to say.

I feel a little like graffiti or a traffic accident or a deck of cards used to play Euchre like I did at Eagle Bluff. Staying silent for a long time always makes me feel a little unsettled and a little sick to my stomach like I walked into Harvard market to pick up a box of cigarettes and smoked through half of them on my way to class. It's impossible to say things using mixed metaphors and all I can do is sip on decaf alone in Perkins or stand by the white lilacs in the rain that have decided to bloom a month late this year.

It stopped raining for the party because I asked God to wait a while and he complied, and now he's compensating because another Thunderstorm will keep you awake tonight, but I'll sleep heavily and your call won't wake me when I'm tangled in no one's T-shirt but my own.