There are places I have found. There are places that I have gone. People give strange looks with laughter in their eyes when a child walks off on her own into where the ground is not covered with cigarette butts and nothing is paved. Because of them, I go more often and I laugh louder. I have many of these places that are just for my brain and me to inhabit for a while. When I find a less temporary escape from the sickening truths of my own humanity, probably in an UFO, I hope to find others like me tagging along with the aliens that comes to destroy us. And we will all be laughing our ***** off; we saw this coming and packed our thoughts in airtight containers. For now, my thoughts are packed in a backpack with music, a hammock, and some seltzer water. I am walking to get out of here. I find myself getting lost in cornfields and peeing in the woods. It’s rejuvenating. Fresh air and headaches are a perfect match.
I am sitting, swinging, hanging from the dancing trees of the crack ******* forests. I think about how every time I chase a squirrel it attacks me. They are fluffy and cute but they want to get inside my house; they want to pry away at my poorly assembled pieces. I’m so unused to that attention and curious affection. I think about my subtly strange mannerisms and my lack of cautious paranoia. These things have had a tendency to intimidate, to make people leave the crowbars in the basement and eliminate any sort of prying. My attributes are intimidating to all but the squirrels. They only seem to see them as weakness. I am still swinging, but my hammock is slipping from the branches now, clinging onto them, a child to its mother. The instructions told me it could hold up to four hundred pounds but even I can hardly hold the weight in between my shoulders. Heavy thoughts are pulling me down. Ropes are slipping more and I can already feel my *** getting sore from this drop. But I do not get off. I keep swinging. My brain is telling my legs to move, my heart is screaming “Save me,” but my legs are not replying. I stay on this hammock, praying that my legs will pull me off before I fall to the ground. I am afraid of being even near to this littered ground. I want the heights. I call for help but only a sigh leaves my mouth. There is no one around to save me anyways. I chose a place in the woods; I chose a place that could grant me the illusion of seclusion…an escape from the trivialities taken too seriously. I cannot wait for someone because this slipping will not even wait for me. I will crash if I do not save myself. I try to coast and the swings get shorter and shorter until they have stopped and I am stationary. In moments I will have more broken parts than I can count.
I lie there silent, unmoving, not thinking any longer. Only waiting...finally, I hear snaps of the branches falling and breaking. The ground came up fast. It punched me. It crowded me. It abused me like a misguided lover. I do not wish to be in its arms any longer. But the ground is holding on to my bones, pulling me in. I hit it hard. The drop was farther than I expected. I have no feelings anymore. My nerves have shut off. I am scared. Someone take me some place safe, some place sound…no, take me some place wild. Lying on my back, numb and careless, my eyes are glued to the blueness of the sky above me. I am so relaxed. I hear screaming. I see blood, but I don’t feel pain. I don’t want to know what’s going on, I keep my eyes staring straight up at the view. I ignore everything but the wind-shaped clouds. My mind is gone, lost like all the rest of time. It wore away because I remembered too many times how my father’s hands smelled of sawdust and how they felt like the sandpaper he that used to make it. I try to avoid addressing the situation at hand, things are turning redder. My eyes are filling with blood and it is hard to see. I think about life and the lack of it. All it is really is just memories, without those the only thing that exists is right now. Which doesn’t exist anymore, it’s a different second, and now another. Life is nothing but the time we are losing. Maybe this view of the tree tops framing the sky will be the last thing I see, or maybe I will lay below them again tomorrow. I am glad that everyone must die. It is more beautiful that way.
I gulp, a gust of air fills my stomach and it feels like floating. I am still lying down. The smells of illegality, fire, and cut grass fill my ears just like music. Everything mixing together, all into one entity. I am the only thing alone, still lying on my back in the middle of some trees. The same trees I have been crowded by for all of these years, but dug up and replanted on the other side of the country. All of a sudden, I hear something pop. It is the elevation still stuck in my head, the headache I couldn’t defeat. The pain persists and all throughout my head the places and the people that I had made my home were telling me to stay. I am glad that I did not. There is no place or person who could carry my weight. I am my own constant. I am on the ground, just another fallen leaf, and I am finding a place inside my brain in an attic of ideas where I can peruse the shelves and maintain my insanity. No matter if I am here or elsewhere, I must maintain. They will not make me sane, I won't have it. Even the pain I feel now, sticks jabbing into my ribs and fear everywhere else, will not be enough to dull me.
I had dipped off the path to find myself away from what was familiar and now it pounds in my head, the lack of altitude. Without it my brain doesn’t know what to do. I am worried what I will become when I am alone here. I hear the chapel bells chime in, four rings and then they fade away. I still hear it ringing in my ear, though minutes have passed since it sounded…
Ringing…
Ringing…
Ringing…
“Hello?”
“Finally you pick up your phone, I’ve left three voicemails today…are you okay?”
“…”
