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 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 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, but the squirrels only seem to see them as weakness. I am still swinging, but my hammock is slipping from the branches now, clinging on to them, a child to its mother. The instructions told me it could hold up to 400 pounds but even I can hardly hold the weight in between my shoulders. 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, 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, this slipping will not wait. I will crash if I do not save myself. I try to coast, the swings get shorter and shorter until they have stopped and I am stationary. In moments I will have more broken parts that 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 it's 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'm 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 much about the times my father’s hands smelled of sawdust and how they felt like the sandpaper he used to make it. I try to avoid addressing the situation at hand, things are turning more red, my eyes are filling with blood. 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. I am glad that everyone must die, it is so beautiful.
I gulped, a gust of air filled my stomach and it felt like floating. I was still lying down. The smells of illegality, fire, and cut grass filled my ears just like music. Everything mixed together, all into one entity. I was the only thing alone, still lying on my back in the middle of some trees. All of a sudden, I heard something pop. It was the elevation still stuck in my head, the headache I couldn’t defeat. I had dipped off the path, away from what was familiar and now it pounds in my head, the altitude. Now without it my brain doesn’t know what to do, I only worry what I will become. I hear the chapel bells chime in, 4 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?”
“Pick up your phone, I’ve left three voicemails today…are you okay?”
"....."