can't go home

The sunlight slides down the wall, and now it pauses, just before it puddles onto the carpet. The apartment is warm. And motionless. The wall stares back at me until I actually see through it. The room disappears in a late-afternoon haze and I step into a memory of incense and wood smoke;  of dust on my tongue and leaves in my hair. Of joyful dancing, and my sister’s hand clasped in my mine. She younger than me, but her hands are so much larger. She wears a large steel ring on her pinky. Her nails are bitten off, receding into her cuticles. There is dirt on her elbow and across her shoulder. But she doesn’t care. I can hear bagpipes and the beat of a drum – a bodhran ticking away, puncturing the evening air. I can hear voices, conversations filtered through years of looking back. I turn my head trying to make out the words.

                In the memory, my heart is light and free. I go running through cobble-stone streets, my sister hastening after.

                In the late afternoon, the sunshine flushes pink, and disappears into the floor.

My heart feels ill. There is no smoke and incense to comfort it.  

fireworks

I called taunts over my shoulder at him, prancing through the crowd, and ducking easily in and out of people’s paths in the darkening evening. Some stopped and stepped back, startled, and to those, I gave a little half-bow before continuing on my way.

It’s not every day that you get to be a hobbit at the nation’s largest renaissance festival. Coming to this place dressed as Frodo Baggins was a little like showing up at Disney Land in full Mickey Mouse costume. After a full day of revelry,  I had become accustomed to the attention I received: people stared, giggled, or even went so far as to ask for a hug or photo. Some touched my red curly locks and asked if it was real. Some jokingly tried to steal the One Ring hanging down in front of my vest, which would cause me to jump back and whip out Sting, my trusty orc-fighting sword… at which point my level of dedicated fan-girl-ness would usually scare them off. Some actually believed me to be male, which made me feel accomplished (the tight sports bra and careful study of boyish movements only heightened my acting) ;  however, the look on their faces was priceless when my space-cowboy boyfriend came sailing into the conversation just to grab my ass.

I had said boyfriend by the hand now, and together we made it up a slope to the stone arches of the jousting arena.  My bare feet were covered in dirt and the grass felt good to my soles. It had become completely dark, and in the shadows of the pillars, I slid my pack off my shoulders so I could stretch out my arms and casually arch one around the space cowboy’s neck.

I waited with bated breath as drums began. Peeking over the heads of the crowd, I could see the jousting field lit up, flames licking across designs spiraled in the dirt. The heady music grew; the people yelled, screamed, bellowed; and a lone man danced across the grounds with a torch. With slow-motion grace he bent to light a cannon.

For a split second, nothing happened.

And then a thunder blast sent us reeling back, as great plumes of fire and color blossomed in the night sky. Gem-colored rockets shrieked as gleefully as its onlookers whilst spiraling into impossibly chaotic showers.

But while the magic roared on, I found my gaze wandering to his face, alternately lit between the explosions – thrown into darkness in one moment, then washed with a daylight shade of gold. His glasses caught each firework and gleamed; I could hardly make out his eyes behind them, but  I knew from the quirk at his mouth that he was reminiscing. And that it was a happy memory. Perhaps a childhood one. I nuzzled my face into his neck, breaking his reverie, and he hugged me tightly, fingers trailing through my hair.

I no longer watched the gunpowder show; all of my attention had shifted to him. Thoughts of our imminent separation began to seep into my excitement, and I clung to him, burying my face in his chest. Soon the emotion was overwhelming, not knowing when I would get to watch fireworks with him again, or hold him, or brush hair out of his face, and tears leaked down the length of my nose, seeping into his jacket. It was with a great strength of will that I lifted my head, caught his eye, and brushed my lips over his. He kissed me long, cupping my face in his hands, and I loved the taste of his breath. Even with my eyes closed, firework patterns danced across my eyelids in dazzling colors.

Before long the spell ended. We broke apart as the show came to a booming close, and the crowd jostled us forward. In silence, we held hands as we walked under the dark sky. I carried a strange mix of sorrow and joy that felt heavier than the pack across my shoulders. And I knew that this moment – this geek-infested renaissance fair – would hold so many memories for years to come. I clutched the thought to my heart like a medieval amulet. 

the mojave

The sun beat down through the windows, and burned our skin. Our lips cracked and peeled; our voices were hoarse. And still the road stretched on, hardly deviating from its straight and narrow west-ward course. We had no cowboy instincts to guide us in this country. This was not a movie. We only knew to continue to plunge on into the sand, hardly straying, just like the asphalt path forged before us. Our eyes grew tired. Our thoughts turned homeward.  It was eternity.

Purgatory.

Hell.

Everything came to a point at the horizon, and this we stared at for days. The flat arc of the desert  was a fresh novelty at the start, as we  marveled at the lack of advertisements, houses, and people. But eventually even the other cars on the road drifted away and we were left alone in the wasteland, with no other soul to speak to except each other. Soon the center point, where the road stretched like a string of grey taffy, disappeared into a dizzying flash of water. As the sun grew hotter, the mirage spread out towards us, until I started to feel we would hear the refreshing whoosh of our tires splashing onto the shore. But always, the pale lake shrunk away from us, mile after mile, and the hot water bottles left in my car did not soothe our cracked mouths.

stuttering starts

I oftentimes wake after long hours of talking to people I haven’t seen for what feels like decades, in my lily-white dreams. Sometimes it really is a decade; sometimes they are dead and I am remembering happier times. But when they are alive and well, and I feel fondly towards them, in my half-awake state, I wish to continue the conversation I had with them, sitting to their right on a bar stool, sipping at my rum between sentences. With my eyes still closed, my body still warm under the covers, I think well of the world, and want nothing more than to see these people again, and talk idly, as we did between classes in high school, or out in the fields of the midwest. But in the true waking hours, as I sit with my tea in front of my computer, I do not know if they feel the same towards me. There is a strange social wall that appears when you move or go off to college; if you don’t call your friends once a week or write them letters... they are suddenly not your friends. They disappear off the edge of the earth. They are living their own lives, just as I should be living mine, but there are so many moments when I think of our old camaraderie, and I sincerely, sorely miss the jokes, the banter, and the pranks. But we are older now. Older than I realize, I think. And such a time is not to come again.  I linger over the keyboard, hesitating to even say hello. It should not be so difficult to reach out to a friend. But after many years... it is.