littleanomalies

[littleanomalies]

on leaving the place you love

June crept up like it had been vying for my attention, like it was stalking me in the night of spring. And winter, for that matter. Waiting for its’ moment to pounce, all while masquerading as an innocent but attracted stranger. I welcomed it with open arms, like a lover I didn’t know I was waiting for. I welcomed the sun and the blooming flowers, the gentle wind and the ever-beating unbearable and uncharacteristic heat. I whined about the sweat dripping down my neck, but I thanked the world for being warm for once. It felt like I had woken up from a restless sleep, an unending dream of cocktail orders and too-loud speakers. Live music blared across the bar. Sometimes I winced, sometimes I danced, my feet all too familiar with this floor.

By writing this, I feel that I am cementing something that I would almost prefer stay in the liquid form. I remind myself that I don’t have to say goodbye yet. I remind myself that emotions are fleeting, that nobody will force me to do anything. Still, I wish a decision would be made for me. By putting this on paper, I fear that I am setting into motion a series of events that will rip me in half. I know that it sounds stupid. I know that it’s just a bar, really, it’s just a basement. A collection of wood paneling and cement, antiques and liquor bottles. My own photo left proudly on the wall by someone who cherishes me. It’s not mine, but some days it feels like it is. The only place I’ve ever known inside out, the only place that breathes and beats the way my own organs do. My footprints left on every inch, my voice echoing all around. Me, intertwined with every ghost that’s ever walked in and out. It, committed to being the only consistent ghost in my life after all of these years.

I tell myself, again, that I don’t have to say goodbye yet. Nobody will force my hand, the wind will never push me out the door. I can stay as long as I please, I can remain. I can always know that one day I will have to say goodbye.

So, I wrestle the ghost. I pin it to the floor, my hands gripping its’ wrists. I feel its' force coming up from under me, I find my back to the ground. In this power struggle, I am reminded that as well as I know the ghost, I don’t really know how to wrestle. The ghost asks me what I want, and I tell it I want to be happy. “Aren’t you, though?” It says, “Don’t you love it here?” And it’s right. I do love it here, and the fact of the matter is that I’ve never really been happy anywhere. Most of the time, though, I am happy when I am here. I am confident, and I am laughing, and I am making other people laugh. I am finding joy in the steps I take, I am finding joy in knowing and being known. I am hosting first dates that turn into marriages, I am connecting with strangers over a shared hometown and a love for this bar. I am introducing wandering souls into a sweet oasis, a place unchanged through war and peace times, through rotating administrations, unmarked by the things it has witnessed. I find life in it, I find that most days, the heart of the bar seems to beat with my own footsteps. I love the bar, and it loves me back.

The ghost, I know, is torn in two. There is half of the ghost that wants me pinned to the floor. This half has sparkling visions of the future, and sees us raising a glass together years down the line. This half knows that I am the only person who sees what it does, crystal clear and unwaveringly. It tries to bargain with me, wanting my blood pact. It flatters me, and tells me I am special. This half knows that I would do anything for it. The other half of the ghost is scared that maybe I will. It loves me in a different way, so much, in fact, that it never wants to see me again, except maybe in 20 years. Hesitantly, it hopes that one day I will stumble down the same stairs with more wrinkles on my face and a woman on my arm, and I will have stories of a world outside of this bar. We will smoke a cigarette together and laugh about what could have been. The ash will fall to the same concrete ground I used to tread over daily. The ghost will go on without me, and I without it.

The ghost, all of it, knows that my soul feels tied to the door frame. It knows that when I cut that tie, it will feel as if my own tendons are stretching, and that I will leave the fibers of my own body behind. Its’ better half will throw my particles around like confetti, rejoicing in my ability to let go. It will kick me out the door, and maybe, if I can’t separate my fingerprints from the age-old wood, it will drag me out.

I find myself locked inside of this narrative, this story that spans long before my mother was a thought in her mother’s mind and one that will continue to unravel through a history not yet lived. The time will pass, the world will continue to spin, I will dance in new places, and this little corner of my universe will always be here. I will yearn to nestle up into it. The cardinals will flutter across the courtyard before the wind carries their wings away. My hands shake when I think about going with them, and my hands shake when I think about them going on without me.

I close my eyes and I imagine this eternal timeline, this place that has remained through it all. I imagine the big wide world and all of the places I’ve never been, I see the earth spinning, uncaring for any decision I make. It is nothing that hasn’t been said before, but I am simply a speck on its’ horizon. The earth does not care if I stay. The earth is filled to the brim with ghosts who all want things.

I am tired of thinking about the ghost. I am tired of living with the ghost in my head, and I am tired of writing about the ghost. It haunts me anyway. It senses the tension in my chest, it sees my long gaze across this small bar. I tell it that I will leave when I am ready, when I can’t bare the sight of its’ white-clothed body anymore, when I can’t take a step without wincing, when I can’t speak without choking, when I’d rather drive my car off the road than parallel park on this hill again. It, calmly, and with its’ smoke-toned voice, tells me that there will always be parking spots. It asks how long I can stand to balance on the tightrope between leaving and not leaving, how long I can live knowing what it will feel like to say goodbye, how white my knuckles can get. Maybe I hope that one day the sight of it, of this place, will sour so much that my mouth puckers when I think about it, and leaving won’t hurt. The remaining love I feel will fade into disdain and I will exit in flames, in a fire that can’t be tamed by the wet summer rain.

When I look to the horizon, I see the end of June.

[littleanomalies]

twenty-four

the moon always rises and the sun always sets

that's always how it goes

but i chased the moon to see where she rests

and i ended up alone

there are two black holes

where my lungs are supposed to be

all my friends grew up

and scrubbed theirs clean

i know there's probably somewhere

that i'm supposed to be

but right here seems just fine

the leaves all change in the fall

that's how nature runs its' course

but i wish that they wouldn't change at all

i wish they'd take a side in nature's annual divorce

but the night sky doesn't surrender to my echoes

and the leaves still insist on being yellow

i'm having all these revelations

and the earth has the audacity to keep spinning

do you think that satellite is taking my picture?

starstruck, i'm still stuck in the beginning

god knows you can see my insides from that far away

so when my time is done, i'll lay

out on a table and heaven's doctors will stare

and stare and stare some more

at the anomaly

that is either me or being twenty-four