ephemera

i always get like this in the springtime

Scenes: 

INT. The soft yellow glow of the morning, no corner of your room untouched by its light. your arms pulling me into you and my brain going quiet. Everything stops when you touch me. I don’t mind letting you have that kind of power. My eyes close and i slip back into a dreamless sleep. Everything is in its right place. Take note.

INT. In the car next to you. we’re talking about a band we like, how most of their songs are gibberish sung poorly over the same two chords. how we like them anyway. I’m laughing, because I’m always laughing with you. everything feels easy. Take note.

EXT. late at night, the park with J. so much of our stories have happened at this park. She knows all of mine and i know all of hers. It feels so good to not have to explain yourself to someone. We have an intrinsic understanding of each other’s psychology. I go to see her when i want to feel like myself again. she’s crying about a boy but I’m still able to make her laugh. It’s one of my favorite sounds. Take note.

INT. E’s room, mid july. We spent the entire day outside, and now we’re back home, sunburned and sleepy. C is talking animatedly about something while E absentmindedly strums a guitar. We don’t know yet that this is the last time summer will ever feel this way. I pull out my digital camera and take a picture. I want to capture the whole scene. Life has been good to me this summer. I feel younger than I am. We’re still just kids after all. I catch myself smiling. Take note.

Train stubs from the summer I went to Italy. Bus tickets from all the San Francisco trips. Receipts from shops we went to together. The ring left on the table from the coffee you made me. The minutiae of everyday life. I keep everything. I don’t want to forget any of it, especially you. I want to commit you to memory in a way that is permanent and final. I’ve forgotten too much. If I don’t write it all down it’s just sand through my fingers. I’ve always been a details over big picture kind of person. You get older and time moves faster, the specifics tend to slip away. You remember the feelings, but not the exact words they said, or the splash of freckles across their nose, or the mannerisms only they have. The finer points of a person are lost to time. I won’t lose you, not that way. 

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march: the ice is breaking. it’s getting warmer and the world is starting to make sense again. in autumn i am preparing. by winter i am tired. then spring, magical spring, where, if the wind blows just right i remember how the air felt on my skin in may of 2009. it’s the only time of year i let myself get nostalgic. in spring i am eight years old and nothing has happened to me yet. school is about to end, everyone has a crush, everything feels important. things feel delicate and fragile, in a way that excites me instead of frightens me.

Rebirth: spring reminds me of the cyclical nature of things. because of this, i’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. it lurks beneath every one of my movements. it’s the dark corners of my brain, the shadows i don’t like to linger in too long. Memento Mori.

summer: the sunshine has a tendency to drive me to extremes. everything is passion, intensity, anxiety, sex, death. the way i like it. blood reds and ocean blues. when i think of summer i think of my grandparents house. a place where time stops. where two weeks drips by like a year. the yellow shine of the porch light, the blue glow of the television. The familiar crunch of the gravel beneath my feet. Excitement bubbling in my chest. Like stepping into another world. The arizona heat is dry and sticky. The tv only has three channels. I hear my grandfather’s calm, quiet voice. My grandmother makes me a grilled cheese because it was always my favorite. These are my best memories. The mental image I have of them, reading in silence together at dawn, coffee mugs in hand. I’ll always see that clear as day.

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sometimes I miss being teenaged, when time was stretched around me like an infinite web, sticky and invisible and so easy to get lost in. but I didn’t appreciate the endless hours. i felt crushed under their weight. adolescence was a slow slog through the icy terrain of loneliness, and i don’t miss the isolation for a second. The older i get the warmer life is starting to feel. It’s the ties that bind, the intricacies that get us all tangled up in each other, the wetness of someone else’s blood on your hands. Togetherness.

i’ve been thinking more about dreams these days. what they mean, where they come from. they are, by nature, entirely private. you can describe a dream you had for someone else, but they weren’t there, they will never be able to play in your subconscious and you can’t play in theirs. my dreams are eerie and mundane. they never feel quite right. like summer rain. i wish i could grab you and show you my memories. i wish you could touch them all. wish my past wasn’t unfurling around me, secret and mine, alone. i wish we could carry its weight together. i want to show you my dreams, want you to know how it feels inside, where i live. i don’t want any part of me left untouched by you.

None of these thoughts are original. i’m tired of writing about my life. it feels stupid and small. i can’t write anything that feels worthwhile and it’s driving me crazy. all day and night i’m thinking about death. about time and change and memory, and the  way so many moments become lost to us in the end. the curve of a smile, the way someone’s skin feels, the warmth of their laughter - all things photographs can’t capture. things we inevitably forget. writing is how i stretch time out, manipulate it, string events together and make some kind of sense out of them. i make the good feelings immortal. it’s my way of cheating death. but i think I’ve been getting too tangled up in my emotions. i wish i could write less from a place of feeling, and more from that elusive area of my brain that sometimes produces serious and rational thought. everything is carnal with me, never cerebral. i’m much more animalistic than a girl should be. i write about sex and ghosts and gut feelings. i’m too introspective, i think too much about myself, i spend all my days worrying about other people’s feelings. is that just who i am, or some phase i never grew out of? maybe it’s because I’ve never had my heart broken. maybe then i’d think about something other than love. i think if i could, i’d be smarter. more productive. well-rounded. but i’m one of the lucky few. i know the meaning of everything. i close my eyes and see it all; the web of time, the red string of fate. flesh and bone meeting flesh and bone. i know how each and every one of us are interconnected, and why. the beautiful ways people hurt each other over and over, the way we burrow in someone and make a home out of them. you and your warm blood, sweet to the taste. wet me with it.