Tiny Thoughts.

57

561
You ask me,
"What does Pizza taste like? The sauce, the cheese that is. Not white pizza. Not shitting on white pizza though or anything." We laugh together and I lean back against the couch, propping my temple on my hand clenched in a loose fist. Im gripping my thoughts like ropes.
"Like Italy, it tastes like italy." She smiles and nods and continues to ask,
"And the sauce?"
"Like basil,"
"And what does basil make you think of?"
"Italy."
...
I remember poison ivy tainted legs and smelly bakeries, running past my sisters clad in birthday dresses.
I am asked,
"What about peanut butter? What about cake?"
"School lunches and summertime. All the birthdays we celebrated were mostly in warmer weather. My sister loved peanut butter. I had it every day on a sandwich for lunch when I was a kid."
What about fruit? Figs? Apples? Raspberries?
Raspberries are innocence.
Figs are growing older.
Apples are youth and loose teeth.
Mint is the peppermint that grew in our front garden, onions are the sisters of chives that I'd pluck and chew in hot mid May.
Oat milk is my summer.
Pretzels are the ocean sea, or salt mines, or the time I over seasoned my rice when I was a kid.
Granola is hiking a mountain for the first time with my closest friend. The pain and the fear and the hatred that reeked over me.
An Oreo is listening to Janis Joplin for the first time in my black and white pajamas.

562
And in the darkness of my closed closet doors, I lift my finger to my mouth, beckoning silence in. Let it engulf us.
So no one may hear our silent embrace.

563
This room, these beams,
They turn into a mothers loving embrace.
And I welcome them with loving arms,
The skin melting off my elbows,
My cheeks, sunken in like sand dunes.
The silence is echoing,
But the warmth,
The warmth is so comforting.

564
The light, my light,
She is no fluorescent bulb,
A bobbing creature far up in the rafter of the frail white ceiling.
She is no meek presence, no weak being.
She is my strength. She is my valor. She is my fighting reason.
She is by my side when we face the darkness,
She is at my hand and when we fight the hidden ones.
We do this together.
We exist for each other.
We live in spite of the world,
And we relish in each others bright presence.

565
We made it.
Month six.
We made it to June my darling.
We have grown, we have fallen,
The darkness has left it's residence under our eyes, the bruises on my arms are fading. Our bodies are rebuilding. Our souls are mending.
Finally, we are surrounded by awoken minds, open thoughts. Limes sliced open on the kitchen counter.
We are here.
We are alive.
We exist. We exist. We exist.

566
I am the backseat boy.
Shaded and hidden,
Far from their sight.
I am hiding.
I am running.
I am playing seek with my captors.
Never will I be free.
Never will they know.
I am a mask. That I am a facade, of blue skies over gray.
Never will they realize,
That I am the boy in the backseat.

567
These are the end credits.
I stare at the Watcher, watching me.
He looks back.
Empty eyes boring on empty sinks.
"What are you doing," he questions silently.
I do not answer.
That is the end.
This is the end.
There is no continuation.
My listeners are left dreaming,
The show is left streaming.
I leave the living room,
With the TV static black and foaming at the mouth. Breaking out of its chains and leaping for my back.
And I snap the door shut.
And the screen goes black.
And I leave the Watcher watching silence.

568
And the world caves in.

569
I was all over her.
I never left her side.
My hand, gripping hers,
Our tears are aligned.
I am desperate,
She is drowning.
We are one.
We are neither.
She wants thinness,
I want freedom,
She listens to the night voices, the ones inside her head, the ones that give advice and sing and sneer and jeer.
I hear her cries. I hear her muffled voice, oscillating between yes and no. I see myself in her. I see her in me.

570
Second to last-
Day of sophomore year.
It wasn't particularly important.
But it feels like we only go backwards.
From that, I retire,
To my bed.