Flashing

– is awesome?

So, um, as a result of my column in Emory’s student newspaper, the Wheel, I totally got flashed Friday night by some girls from the freshman dorm I wrote about.

Honestly, I understand; they were upset and really felt their point would be made best with bare skin.

Fortunately, it’s all a sign of productive, critical thought taking place.

Also, I recommend this as a strategy to cope with Valentine’s Day depression for all the singles out there: write something critical about people being encouraged to reveal themselves in public, and maybe they will reveal themselves to you. Loneliness stems from spending too much time with the fully-clothed.

This message is brought to you by Two Yellow Flowers, Pretty Even in the Dark

Break by Metaphor

A layer of paint has separated us;
we look so hard we’re seeing sun spots.

We forget.

A faded blue lamp on my side has lit me in twilight
and I am wearing the pretty purple shawl that I dreamt last night.
There were stars out in the black sky last night. The Milky Way
made the moon seem watery, and so I stared
into its face without eyes. I felt a little afraid;

somewhere between my lips and my ears
a monster roared morosely and I
went to bed, thinking mostly of the paint,
a façade between you and me,
but found myself distracted by the roar.
Now my imagination is rolling toward me,

and you do not hear trembling or me asking
Is this real? What I hear, what I see
enough to panic or forget.

I am here in the tormented silence imagining torment,
and no sunlight. There is a layer that sealed us separate.
I am confused. It was deliberate.
The ocean is rising.

You and me, we will be preserved in salt and distinction.
I know what you would say to that, how your eyes
would slide to one side and you would nod
to show you were listening even though you are not listening;

I can see.

My Incredibly Mature Confession

Ok, so apparently being alone on a small island in Greece for two weeks can actually be a little lonely. It’s almost as if being able to communicate with people in person is important to mental health or something. Right.

However, I have an alternative reading of my feelings of loneliness. What is actually going on is that I am being pushed to manage my time wisely and do all of the things that I think I want to do in an efficient way and that happens to be vaguely challenging. I’m feeling lonely because I can’t blame other people for interference or my lack of focus.

And maybe this sounds a little strange, but I this thinking to be a good step. I hit the wall a little bit yesterday and the day before — feeling frustrated and letting myself engage unhealthier activities as a distraction from all of the healthy activities that are more challenging (playing solitaire on my phone and watching like four episodes of a TV show that really isn’t, um, quality). But now I have the opportunity to acknowledge these as tactics of delay, maybe even coping mechanisms for feeling overwhelmed by my own sets of goals, and I can put them aside and refocus — because I still have a little over a week to master nirvana. Right? Right.

Not that watching an episode of less-than-quality television on occasion is deeply destructive to humanity. But maybe compulsively watching four is less impressive.

So. It has been decided. I am getting up early tomorrow. Watch out, people. Super productive wild woman is making her entrance.

Notice the question mark...

Being the Couch (400)

It is time, I think, watching the spot on the wall that I watch and sometimes practice not watching. It is time for her to come home. I feel grateful to face the clock, that I can know when to expect her through the door with the whoosh of air that would give me goose-flesh if I were fragile, the way she is. But my fabric is thick and stuffed. I am always warm.

She is late and I wait. I feel jealous of the bus and the dirty seats where she sits, one leg tossed carelessly over the other, her nose in a book and headphones nestled in her ears. I can’t help feeling jealous; I am alone, and I am hers; they are plastic flat seats of a common bus, with constant company.

Anticipation is torture. My fabric is tense in expectation, as when she sneezes and I imagine her staying home all week, away from work, near me all day between soup and juices and dozing naps. I know she prefers sleeping with me anyway, that I am more comfortable, more informal than the austerity of bed.

What terror it is, this stale loneliness. The room is claustrophobic. The air is dead and still. The clock ticks and I practice looking away now, because I am anxious. I would wish for a cat, but then, well – how does the adage go? “Be careful what you wish for…or something?”

Lord, now I’m talking to an empty apartment. The stools are hardly companions, so polished and unfriendly.

I fantasize a party; imagining her friends arriving and the wine, the crackers, all those sprawling people to sit here and sink into me. It grows late and I know I am fantasizing, but I can’t stop until whoosh, the door opens, and there is laughter. She is here.

With someone else – a man; I smell his cologne. One for company – at this time – is, well, nice I suppose, but probably I am being generous because she is here and I am happy and the soft air is washing over me.

They stumble across the living room, and she collapses onto me, pulling him along. I feel the voyeur; pleased and disgusted, but pleased yet. And I enfold them because I have to and I want to, because they are here and this is my duty, in all my yielding loyalty.

This post was written in response to a prompt by Write on Edge, which asked us to personify an object in 400 words or less.