Cerulean

I awoke in the middle of the ocean

My bed pitched out on the waves

And the sky forever around me.

I felt like the whole world was all for me

All the little wonders stitched into the fabric of space

Left there for me.

I just spent all morning floating.

At noon I ate sandwiches and drank coke out of a glass bottle.

And then I floated all afternoon.

 

When the sun set it looked like the whole ocean was on fire.

I watched the sky separate out into its multitude of colors

All running into each other and melting into the ocean

And then I ran my fingers through the water

Looking for the colors that had dripped out of the sky.

When it was really and truly dark

I just lay there and looked up at all the stars I’ve never seen before

And I wasn’t really hungry.

 

At midnight, I went for a swim

And when I was finished and fresh and tired I climbed back on my bed.

In the dark I ate more sandwiches, and watched the fish crowd around the crumbs I dropped.

And then I watched as the sun started to think about waking up

And the colors started to run up out of the ocean and into the sky.

And all the wonders were still there,

Just for me.

Grieving

Fly forth from your humble homes,

wind-tossed and wandering, yearning.

Eulogizing.

Remembering the lost and the tarnished and the

golden.

 

Let your offerings fall on open hands.

Let your givings grieve the givers and the getters

all the same.

Let your tears torture your soul,

for from that torture you will emerge

 

whole.

Installment II

What I mean is, she had this notebook she carried with her, and she was always writing in it, and I never knew what she wrote in there, cause I don’t think anyone knew really.  But when someone came over and talked to her, and it wasn’t like people were going over and talking to her all the time, but she listened, so when people did she would close that notebook and put her pen right on the page she’d been on and when she looked you in the eyes she was so serious.  I mean, even if you just wanted to ask her what the algebra homework was or something dumb like that, she was always looking at you like it was important.  And whenever I looked at her, I saw that.  I saw the ponytail she was always taking out and putting back up, and I saw her little notebook that she was always writing in, and I saw how she looked happy even though she was kind of on her own.  I liked that she was happy like that, I guess cause I was like that too, only I didn’t want to be by myself, but I didn’t want to be around any of the people I knew.  Only her, except I didn’t want to ruin her.  I wanted her to be the girl who would look at me like I mattered, and I didn’t want her to turn out to be just another somebody.  Everybody was too busy being a somebody.

 

Installment I

So, in explanation of what this is, I started writing, and somehow this happened, and I started turning into J. D. Salinger a little bit.  Just a little, but just enough that I’m really fascinated, because I’ve never sounded like J. D. Salinger before.  So, as this evolves, installments will appear.  Hopefully at least one a week, but I guess it all depends on how this goes.  Without further ado, here’s the first one:

 

She didn’t look like other people somehow.  I mean, if you just looked at her, she was ordinary enough.  She wore her hair in a ponytail and she still had that nice layer of baby fat that teenage girls like to pretend is all gone.  But if you looked at her, I mean really looked, you could see she was different.  It was like when she looked at people, she really saw them.  People didn’t notice her much, because she was just normal looking.  Nice normal.  Normal like, not like she didn’t care exactly, because everyone cares, especially people who say they don’t.  Just normal like she cared a little, but not too much, so people didn’t see her all the time.  But I think she saw them, even if she was just talking to you because you both left school at the same time and you were sitting on the bus and it would’ve been awkward to’ve not talked.  You got this feeling like she wasn’t just talking to you because she would’ve felt awkward not doing it.  Like she actually wanted to hear.  And she had this way of taking her hair out of the ponytail, and then putting it back up into a tighter one, and she did it all the time when she was thinking.  She was thinking a lot, even when she was just talking to people.  Other people never used to make me feel like I mattered.  I didn’t even know her, but she always seemed to think I mattered, somehow.  She thought everyone mattered.  And she was always thinking about what everyone was saying.