If I owned you for a day, I would:
Start the morning off by making you pancakes – and if you hate pancakes, then waffles, and if you hate those two then we’d settle for IHOP or Denny’s or some other shitty breakfast restaurant. It wouldn’t matter what you got, as long as you let me stick some candles in it (because there’s just something about extinguishing fire with the simple breath from your very own lips that makes me feel empowered and maybe it’d make you feel that way too). The only catch would be that before you could blow one out, you’d have to listen to me give you a compliment or reason to get out of bed in the morning.
Get you to dig a hole in the backyard with me and then as we stood there on the outer edges of the hole, I’d look at you and let you know that it was time—time to finally rip all of your sadness out in handfuls and bury it so deep in the ground you’d never be able to get it back if you wanted to. We’d feel it back up with dirt and if you’d let me, I’d even say a shitty little eulogy because it would be a funeral (a funeral for everything bad that you’ve ever overcome, thought, dealt with, anything and everything).
Make a lovely dinner for two and turn all the lights off, leaving only candles lit on the table. And then, right when you’re wondering what the hell I’m doing, the endless recording would start that says, “There is hope, you are worthy, you are loved.” And sure it’d probably get annoying after a while, because my voice is not the kind that people write love songs about, but that would be okay because at the end of the meal, even if you don’t want to think about it, you’d probably still have those phrases running through your head. I wouldn’t say anything as you listened either, I’d just stand there, my presence like a ghost, the kind that haunts its owner quietly, almost lovingly, as if to let the troubled know they’ll never truly be alone because for those 24 hours, you wouldn’t.
Take you rollerblading that night, after dinner was finished and you needed fresh air. But we wouldn’t go to an indoor rink because those are always packed, bodies against bodies, and far too loud to think or speak in. No, I’d take you rollerblading in between the lanes of cars on a quiet road, and if we were lucky the wind would blow over our skin, our hair, our entire existence, and for that moment it would be enough to get us by for the day. Though, I’d have to hold your hand to make sure you didn’t spin too far away too fast or into the opposite lanes. I’d be careful that you were careful, and by focusing all my attention on you, maybe for once I wouldn’t drift into the passing cars either.
(But even though we’d be careful, we’d still hit the Earth like a fucking tsunami, like a meteor, like the end of days—because there is something freeing about having the possibility to lose control, but yet, still remaining completely levelheaded. And for a moment, you’d (hopefully) be too caught up in trying to not get hit by oncoming traffic that you wouldn’t be able to even consider throwing yourself into it.)
And the hour before you’re gone, back to wherever and whoever, I’d write you sappy love letters from one friend to another. The type of letters that you could hide under your skin, beneath the miserable feelings that nestled there after the last time you thought badly about yourself. Love letters that would make some part of you feel a little right again.
If I owned you for a day, I’d do my upmost best to make sure you didn’t think even one terrible thought in 24 hours.
xo
