Here I Am

Here I am. Gravity isn’t very strong, but I feel so heavy. Standing in a playground, clouds swirling above me. There he is, standing, just like me, only he floats above the sandy surroundings. Tall. I run over to him; it takes so long. Everything is yellow. I’m there, but I begin to sink into the sand around me. I can’t swim. He starts to come towards me. We are sitting on a bench, green trees sway to and fro. Hello. Hello. How are you? The question fades into the winds, loud and overwhelming, I can scream and he won’t hear me. He never heard me. I take off his mask. A Lion. With a top hat. That always made me laugh. Didn’t it? Right, Dad? He nods, I must be fine. Nothing to worry about. I scream, this time I here it loud and clear. He is floating away, and I can’t help him. Wave after wave rises above my head and there is nothing I can do to save him. Goldfish. Olympic swimmer my ass. Dead. I swim down the river of tears, freestyle and breastroke, backstroke always scared me. You fucking scary cat! Hey, fuck you! The knife slides through his skin like hot, hot butter. Hot. Sweltering heat, sweat begins to drift into the river, like erosion and landslides, the salty liquid pollutes my stream. Those goddamn bridges. I used to stand at the edges and throw rocks skipping across your surface. But when I came back, the sun had reclaimed you as a cloud. How frightening! I never understood it. But it’s so simple! That’s what they all say. I was never very simple. Expanding and growing like the purple squash that was as big as my car. The car I never rode in. Or was that a bike…They said I had allergies, but I often found myself sneaking sugar onto the warm summer cabin rooftop and enjoying the thousands of shooting stars as they descended on the lake around me. Splash! I often jumped from the roof and caught a few and showed them to my mother. My full name was one of her favorite words. Angry? Never. Compassionate? Hardly. Difficult? That defines my life. A struggle. Upstream or downstream, I’m always working. Sometimes, the radio will talk to me about the geniuses of our past. Vowels and consonants flow from that gold bell like music from a newborn baby’s mouth. Synonyms didn’t work, because everything was different. A Language of their own. Way out there. They say, it never gets too hot at the pole, but poles have always been too hot for me. If I cut my finger, only god can judge me. I can re-identify me, change you. They say you have to go two milimeterss down to erase yourself. Why not just Select All, Delete?. Have you ever seen… My favorite phrase! Don’t we all see things a little differently? Last time I checked, ‘original’ still had a picture of me in the dictionary. And that isn’t saying too much. Too much chocolate on Halloween. So sick of love songs. I would wheel around my cart yelling about Jesus.  And he would see me. Anxious isn’t a word, what’s that ‘x’ doing in there?! I can get so mad sometimes, it makes me want to cry. And then die. But I keep going, pushing through the glass sheet with my hand; it shatters into a billion pieces. Literally. Each of them has a number inscribed on the side. I stepped on piece 354,675,913 and it cut my toe really badly. But I didn’t cry, because I was moving so fast. India looked so pretty at sunrise, a sea of rainbows exploding to life as the light caught each and every building at just the right angle. Like the right timing. If a proposal every caught me off guard, I would surely die and cry again. A new fetus falls from every teardrop, as I expand my repertoire. Getting bored yet? Well, then listen here, you slimy son of a bitch, you think this is a game? No, sir. Oh yeah? Then why the fuck did you stab me? I’m tired of these shenanigans. I’m just a hooligan evading detection, nobody can stop me. The blurping of sirens in the distance shows how close they really are. So I put it in reverse. Right over left instead of left over right. Come here you fucking pigs! So violent! Rage consumed him. I floor it. Off the Grand Canyon we sail into the crisp Alps. Wow, the air is brisk! Did God ever build himself anything? Like a big bench, or a wooden play horse? I would put my bench on the summit of Le Aptu de Frecaise, the world’s second lowest hill. The grass never swayed in different directions, and the weather was always something to write home about. I bounced like a happy school girl across its surface. But it never ended, like a small clock, the battery that lasts a lifetime. Ready Steve? Andy? Shuffle to the beat. A beat box contest sent my head spinning. And I never found that beach ever again. What a shame. Like when the dog died yesterday. He ate too many corndogs. I wonder if I ate all my fingernails, would I die too? I used to put in croutons until my Dad put his fake tooth in our family’s salad. Like that time with the corn on the cob contest. I had to walk a nautical mile eating only popcorn and tall grass. I felt like a cow. But you look like a horse! What a terrible therapist she was. I’m glad I shot her in the foot. Nice wheelchair, bitch! OH! How rude! I apologized in advance. I blew up a plane and it didn’t even make the news. But my father was proud. He held my hand as we walked across the pink sand beach. Pretty tan structures rose up and down in the water. He tossed he out to one, I had to extend my wings so that I wouldn’t miss my landing! Strawberry smoothies never tasted so good. What looked like a mix between a spider, a fly, and a pterodactyl had managed to ruin my evening. It wasn’t even sunset. I receded into my cave and she followed me. She was so nice and kind to the man with the mask. But I cared for her like no other. We were ascending a massive glacier when her primary clip got dislodged from the ice. Global warming killed my wife. I picked up a copy of the New York Times and began to light it on fire. Right in his face. I spat at him and he clubbed me until I woke up, face up, in the brightest place of my life. I sleep on my chest. Pause. Play. Stop. Brakes can stop anything, other than our climbing suicide rate. They should put shit like that in the New York Times, those sneaky bastards. It’s like drinking a smoothie without knowing any of the ingredients. I don’t recommend that. If she could see who I am today, I think she would leave the reddest five finger stain across my chest. She used to read me a poem, “One bright day in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight. Back to back they faced each other, drew their swords and shot each other. Deaf policeman heard the noise, came and shot those two dead boys. If you don’t believe this lie is true, ask the blind man, he saw it too.” A blind man once asked me for spare change and I gave him a ride all the way back home. I’ve never seen a woman so happy. Apparently he was a runaway youth, overwhelmed by teen angst. I felt like a fucking idiot. I drove him back to the reality he had once successfully escaped from. Who the hell am I to play priest, saving people every which way I go? Church was very rough to me as a child, I have scars from their razor sharp rulers. Mother always insisted. I hated when she spoke in a whisper. It sent saves threw my skin and flame through my bones. Like a phoenix, exploding from the inside out. That happened to me once, and I nearly died. Not literally, but the jello was definitely a bad choice. All you can eat buffets receipts are so depressing. The smell of old people made me vomit on the ice rink. The fishing afterwards wasn’t too bad. A late night bed story would always save the day. If clouds were marshmallows, and hot cocoa became the sea, would a chocolate whale come invade my dreams? Splashing to his hearts content, no use crying over spilt milk. He taught me many lessons. Some about girls. Giraffes. Golf. If the greens were too fast, and hole was too low, I never made anything anyways. It was terrible. Like a bad bus driver; which really upsets me. A crybaby. Siblings often haunted my dreams, like vicious ghosts that plagued my sleep. Dreameater. Like the deep end of the pool. Its decision time, I waver and bounce up and down… How did it evolve to be black and white? Like dogs vision. Cats and dogs are colorblind? Like crows? No that’s just a song you silly man. He played his guitar with his beard, long fingernails, and wet sandals with fresh grains of sand clinging for dear life to their newfound home. Raining, one of my favorite things. I used to swim in the streets when it rained really bad. I could sit on a trashcan lid and float lazily down any rapids anywhere. If water ever got into my mouth, I would spit it away. Gravity doesn’t affect water in the rain, didn’t you know? Where did you go? Away, so soon, but we were just getting started. Stretching out my arms, I soon realized that the end was near. He left me and my mother. That’s is definitely what she said, last night, she said, last night, she said, I know this for sure. She escaped through a hole in the wall. I never came home. Once I walked past the same house twice, they began to change colors. It was always this way. I walked out the door and into a new life.