Wednesday Afternoon

watching a window

A flower is a flower. I am shit. A pinecone slumps miserably from a tree. It’s brown and bloated, like a nipple ballooning with milk. I want to pelt it with rocks and watch it burst. Or put my mouth around it. I don’t do anything. Tree branches writhe with each rush of wind before settling back to an excruciating stillness. They are as mocking as I am always looking for a reason to be angry.

I know what my problem is. It’s that no problem I have will ever matter to others like it does to me. They won’t feel it burrowing deep in their gut or squeezing at their heart. All they see is an issue and a cursory solution. I don’t feel like a complicated equation, but people look at me like they’re in over their heads sometimes. Everyone I love tells me they wish they knew the answer. I wish I were a car.

The whole sky is one big cloud. If I look really hard, I can make out streaks of grey. I can’t. It’s all white to me. There isn’t exactly a fog, but a gloom everywhere I look. My eyes feel heavy on the blink, like they want to stay shut. If I keep them closed long enough, I start to feel like I’m not here. I am somewhere new and exciting. And I am not myself. I am something spinning. They snap open before I drift too far away.

It’s starting to rain—slow, meager drops staining the deck. I think the wood looks better like that. I think a lot of things, and I’m not sure when to listen. Some are loud, like shouting. Others whisper. They blend into a monotonous drone that keeps my brain buzzing steadily. When I speak, my sentences are garbled and aimless. I don’t know where they’re going. They always miss their point.

I don’t think this weather will last long. The sprinkling is at a steady pace now, but it lacks the passion. If I were rain, I’d be a hailstorm—the kind you have to pull over and wait out. The last time I saw a real hailing, I was at Jim Morrison’s grave. I meant to bring something to leave there, but I forgot. I drank a bottle of wine in the bathtub. It felt like I was doing the right thing.

The pinecone is sopping wet and dripping rain onto the soaked dirt. I chew at the bottom of my lip. It’s not moving much, a dip now and again that sways with the branches. My fingers twitch; I want to grate the slimy spurs into my hands until my skin is raw. I press my nails into the lines of my palms and focus on the sharp tension instead. It fades in a few moments.

I don’t know how long my eyes have been closed this time. I no longer hear the rain, just the faint hum of an airplane above me. The clouds are thinning, the sky under them tinged with a light blue. The sun is flickering through and warming the deckplanks. I grind my teeth together as I imagine chewing on wood. I think about pain. Then my mother. A flower is a flower. I am still shit.