Aquarium Friday and Other Stories

funny how the whole time

hey guys! so it's been a while, and i'm so sorry, but here's something - i wrote this about a month ago and recently performed it at a spoken word shindig at college and it was really great - personally i think it's better experienced aloud than read, but anyway. if i can somehow get the video on youtube y'all can watch it too :-)

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funny how the whole time, as he looked at me, i thought of his eyes in similes,

i thought, they are blue like the lid of my favourite tupperware cup when i was six,

as she spoke to me, i felt like her voice washed over me,

like the waves on the beach with their harsh sting of salt on freshly shaven legs,

like pulling on a blanket and feeling the sparks bounce off your skin,

as i walked into cvs to buy a bottle of shampoo on a wednesday night,

i looked at the shelves of discount christmas merchandise in january and thought of it

as a comment on the commercialization of religion, of faith, of our reduction to a price tag.

it was a shelf of candy cones.

funny how when i see you, i gather all this paint in my arms, ready to sit you down and love you colourfully,

and afterwards all i want is to sit up close and press my face to yours so i see the colour seeping into your every cell, and maybe it isn't enough so i reach into myself, gouge out these words like scooping out the flesh from pumpkins to make them more beautiful,

and i etch these similes into your skin till you bleed, but the blood blends with the colour and still it is beautiful, and after all we are just metaphors, and metaphors are beautiful,

more beautiful than a harshly-lit shelf of santa hats on a wednesday night,

more beautiful than the drops of dye refusing to leave the inside of the sink,

more beautiful than lying in bed wondering if you're depressed and never calling your mom,

more beautiful than french homework, than the itchy feeling of cut grass on the backs of your thighs, than lukewarm mocha lattes, than feeling like you got your period but you actually didn't,

and you tell me, standing there naked but covered in my childish decoration, clownlike,

there is nothing beautiful about this,

and i tell you,

you know what i think this is like?

and you say,

what?

i think it is like that one time we hiked up a mountain to have a picnic by the river, but i ended up standing there with a stream edging around my disappointed ankles, and our friends lounged on the banks, fishing ants of the marmalade, and said that all they wanted to do was go home, and i thought there was more to the stream, that perhaps we came in the wrong season, that perhaps there was a blockage, but really, it was just a stream.