soapboxdiner

No do overs allowed

Thirteen years ago, a young girl lit fifteen tea votives resting on shelves above her bed. The wall behind the shelves was dark wooden planks, rough and unfinished. On the opposing wall, there was a 4 x 4 foot mirror. To the left, a window out into the rhododendron garden. It was night. Pitch, black, and chilled with the scent of the tropical flowers floating through the opened window.

The girl lit her candles and put The Isley Brothers in her tape deck. She turned off the lights and walked the two feet to the window. She leaned out and inhaled deeply the new spring night air. Then she took a Pepsi can and unceramoniously punctured it's side 6 8 12 times. And then she balled up a healthy pinch of marijuana and set it aflame atop the holes. When it was gone, she did it again, inhale. hold. release.

When she was done, she carefully hid the evidence in a retired school bag in the closet. She sat herself on her bed, below the candles reflected in the mirror. All she could see were the flickers of unsure light they let off. That, and her eyes floating like a cheshire smile in reflection in the mirror. She had pretty eyes, everyone said so. She thought so, too. Sexy eyes. Expressive eyes. Big, green eyes that turned purple when she cried. And she just sat there, lost in the Isley Brothers and the thoughts she kept behind her eyes, and she relaxed - watching the glow of candles flickering off the walls.

She dreamt a lot, back in those days. Boys. The future. Her art. She was a very good artist, she was. She could take a photo and some cheap colored pencil, and rub and coax and blend them into perfect reproductions. Hours would go by, but the pictures were never perfect enough to be done. Eventually they just found their way to the bottom of a stack of forgotten projects that were too far from perfect to ever be brought back out.

.

.

.

Tonight I sit in a darkened house. I listen to Sade, Erykah Badu, and Nina Simone. I watch candles flicker. I sip a beer, and I float off in my mind, just like the girl did 13 years ago. I don't watch my eyes though. I don't paint pretty pictures that are just not pretty enough. I just sit, relax, and listen.

I hear a sound between here and the girl. I see pictures of what's come and passed. Somewhere in the middle is where I want to be tonight. I wish I could share the pictures of the in between with you. But to paint them, still, is an injustice to what they were. Maybe they will be again. I don't hold my breath. But I sure would like some different scenery tonight. Some scenery like what was in between.

I'm not afraid to say, tonight I don't want to be a mother. I want to take away eight years and erase becoming this life. I want a do over. And it has nothing to do with love or lack thereof. It has to do with something more primal and fundamental. I am living the wrong life. And sometimes the sensory data that tells me this life is not my life is palpably strong, this sense of wrong. And I want a do over.

8:11 pm - 02.26.03
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