I see red and pink and think about other colors, too

7:47pm some evening in mid-April / from my notes app

I woke up with a stiff neck and the memory of an old pillow in my grandmother’s house. The one that lived amongst the others in my father’s childhood bedroom on one of the two twin sized beds. The pillow that felt like a rock. My brothers and I would joke about it when we were little kids, teasing who would have to sleep on it, or sneaking it into an unfair pillow fight. I wonder if pillows should live that long; I wonder if the pillow ever gets tired of being slept on.

I try to sit outside my apartment everyday when it’s not the harshest of winter. Daydream of a rooftop garden, or a patch of fruit bearing trees in a backyard- stone fruits, probably. I wonder if it’s too late to inherit my father’s green thumb. I sit here on the stoop for hours at a time, or in quick moments of desperation, to taste the air that exists outside of my inside.

The ice cream truck comes by on some schedule that I’ve yet to find the pattern to, but it’s often enough to always be expecting. Anvil, or angel; something dangling above my head in perpetuity.

Something in the air feels different today. This could be revelatory but it happens with each season change. It’s an exacting moment, when the weather feels firmly committed to what it thinks it wants to be. The seasons preen themselves to align with the moon and stars, even if they’re playing pretend with the rest of us.

I felt the heat today, but not the type that drains me completely. Not the late July or early August heat that dry heaves through the peak of summer.

this is safe heat. this won’t set me ablaze,
won’t leave my skin crying,
won’t leave my heart blistering.

I see a father and child getting ice cream cones. I see fathers with their daughters more than I tend to see mothers. Maybe it’s akin to the superstition of black cats, or maybe this is what they mean when they speak of phantom limbs, like phantom lives. Maybe ice cream sounds like a smart decision for my dinner. The self sabotage of this solstice has been accidentally dehydrating myself. Forgetful, I am, but I haven’t forgotten what I learned years ago: I am still a cactus with an ocean inside of me.

I remind myself of this often, that I am not able to be drowned by anything other than myself. I am my own ship to sink, but I don’t want to do that anymore.

Afloat, no longer treading the water.

I get vanilla and chocolate soft serve with hot fudge in a cup. I pay with my phone, which feels odd, when I remember collecting coins with my childhood friends before the ice cream truck would make it’s way to our block. I return to my stoop and I eat it with a grin on my face. I look up to the windows surrounding me. Four street corners face each other, countless windows and people behind them. I wonder who looks out of theirs as often as I do, and may see me out here so frequently. Curious if they catch me on purpose. Think about what they might think of me, but actually no, I don’t really care. Instead, I think of those pauses before remarkable moments that I read about in a book a few lifetimes ago. Can this moment be equally mundane and remarkable?

The edge of something is so close, that I have to surrender to it now. The air on my skin, the sky above my body. I am here and I am in it. My eyes swell to the brim.

He used to know when I was “in it”. One glance, and the dread I could mask from the entire world could be seen by his eyes only. My emotions start to coil in confusion, no sense to be made of a turbulent mood state. He knew how to navigate through me, and perhaps against, but I dodge the illusions of the past, and the means of self destruction. He knew me before I did, beckoned me back into my own body with benevolence. One time, he read my favorite book to me as I wept and shook and eventually came out of it, stumbling into a safer sleep. One time, he was in it, and I had no fucking idea.

These days, I know when I’m in it, how to move through it entirely on my own. not alone. I have me, and she is who I need. Couldn’t see her for a while, but she finds her way back, like any drifter with geographical emotions. She strays like a cat, homebound or hellbent on rootless trees.