"somewhere it is Spring and sometimes people are in real:

I am sitting on a couch across the city from my home, the sky outside like a lucky packet of Starburst: everything red and pink like it could melt on your tongue. So sweet. It is fall now, but the fall before the rain and there are leaves stretching their red-rimmed veins to catch the last rays of summer. They gather themselves in quiet piles along the curbsides. Sitting on this couch I can hear a soccer game at the Jesuit high school behind the house. Music splitting the quiet into before and after. Music sounding like every robot deathmatch scene from every futuristic movie. Voices, and floodlights, and I can imagine the smell of fog-heavy grass even though there was no fog today. Memory. The lawns here are green the way nothing should be green after so much hot and dry. 

Walking around this house with its big empty rooms, and furniture like adults would use it’s easy to be Not Quite Me. I uncoil the hose and add water to the fountain. Or sprinkle flakes into the aquarium. Or run my fingertip over the waxy leaf of a thriving houseplant.  I remember to feed the dogs. Chase the cat inside before bedtime. Lock the front door. Keep my clothes on or the curtains closed. Tonight I will light a fire in the pit out back. I’ll feed it scraps of newspaper, the last seasoned logs of summer. Tomorrow I’ll pack my things and go back to Real Life. 

It has been two weeks and one day, nearly to the hour, since it fell apart in my hands. Since I said goodbye to a whole future. Since Real Life stopped meaning what I thought it meant, and started meaning lonely. Meant crying in grocery stores. On bathroom floors. On mountainsides, and car rides no matter their duration. For ten of those fifteen days I have been Not Quite Me living a borrowed reality. Tomorrow that ends. 

I’ve been trying to make responsible choices, be impulsive in the least destructive ways. I bought a guitar instead of a puppy. Tried to eat my dinners instead of drinking them. 

I am anxious to post this because it’s been so long since I sunk down into that writing place, and I don’t know what I’m trying to say except it is fall, and at 7:30 the sun has packed its bags for the night, and I’m going to be alright. Maybe not tomorrow when I’m confronted with my real life. But some day, in some other future. Perhaps one I haven’t glimpsed yet let alone kissed goodbye. 

And I hope you will too. Be alright. You are so brave for facing each day with your shaking hands and heavy heart. You are so brave.

-b

I’ve missed you so much.