Slight Change of Rain

You were a face, mossy underneath some branches on top of a tree trunk, near the ground. I dunno, I had no idea anymore. I sat down on a cushion of green and yellow leaves and tried to feel the wind around my skin; I wasn't sure but I thought that I was on to something, getting close to something, finding something that would finally reach down past my skin and muscle and touch the marrow in my bone, touch my body to the core, but something so much more. I wanted to find something that could reach into my mind and touch my phantom as it shuffles away at the sight of something else so close to it. I wanted to be brought to the point where I could look at a white wall and watch it explode into some new reality that I could put down on several white walls and make a life from it, a life from telling people what was inside of my mind. I hadn't written in several days, I wasn't sure how long but it had felt like a long time. I wanted to, I just didn't have the right words to say it. Every now and then I realize that everything I say falls short of what it's suppose to describe. Every single character an atom of what it's building, if an atom. Every time that happens I can't live with writing, the paragraphs go on forever, and I lose the feeling. I can't feel long enough, everything is slow. I looked up at the sky through the leaves; some clouds were passing by like icebergs in the Caribbean ocean.

I was depressing myself.

I toyed with some sticks, breaking some, flicking leaves with smaller, more flexible ones. I was sweating; it was ten and the sun was beginning to make it's climb into the sky. I felt incomplete and as if what I was missing, that bubble inside of me, was filled with smoke that clouded everything I felt until it was just a shrug. I was becoming something different in a chilling way, in the fact that my heart was beginning to get used to it. Get used to falling into my reality in the morning, and falling out at night. I was used to living. I could see every turn and know how to react with the least amount of effort. But what was worst was that I was becoming numb. My mind was alright; I wanted that I thought. My emotions were stable, in fact, I had mostly been happy, and only sad for other people; I thought I wanted that too. I began to pick all the white or near white leaves off of the ground and pile them up next to the mossy tree. They'd be a small community of pearls surrounded by green hills. I felt stupid and got up.

Since when was it about being smart? Or cool? Graceful, polite, and gentle?

I thought about people, human beings, naked human beings in a square building.. We're such awkward creatures, the way we look and act, the sounds we make, our faces and how many ways they can move and what emotions are in their wrinkles and eyes. In that setting no one is better than anyone else. It's like Bob Dylan said, even the president is sometimes naked, and it just shows you how everyone, at their base level as an animal, without the fright of their suits and jewelry, is just as much as everyone else. I shook my head; I was tired of it all and I felt as though I would spill out again, look down and see some tangled wire of a mind bent and shoved into the dirt. I hated it! I shook my head harder and started to run, just trying to run until my heart beat drowned out my thoughts. It reminded me of when I had several thoughts, reminded me of when I would see things behind everything, mix up what was real and what was not real, reminded me of when I would have to drown out so much more. I felt as though, as I ran, I pulled a string attached to a balloon that held it all, and it was constantly trying to pull me up into the clouds where I'd be forever foggy and lost within it's white walls. All I had to do was run against it, but every second I ran in the world I lived in, it filled up with all my thoughts and feelings and memories and mistakes, becoming larger and harder to pull against.

The trees passed over my head; green webs of leaves and branches becoming blurs against the blue sky. Some Spanish moss hung down every now and then, and sometimes billows of Resurrection fern passed in front of me as I floated higher into the tree line. I hoped that I would get tangled up in some nonsense, get stuck and fasted into their embrace so that I could stay at least some what grounded. Maybe some one else would have to catch me on the way, and maybe our combined effort could get us back down to the ground, where were could dig underground, then seal ourselves there and let those balloons fill until we had to walk on the ceiling. I felt a wheeze and stopped running to catch my breath. My heart screamed into the innards of my ears, just loud thud after loud thud.

I looked up coughing. The sun was there, over on top of this palm tree who's head had fallen off, so it was just a wooden spire reaching up into the sky. I wanted to call and ask if I ran towards that, would it pop my balloon?