Things Lost

I enter through the metal, white garage door tinged with rust, bags in both hands. My feet stop briefly and I stand in the only unoccupied area of the garage, breathing in dust as I scan the room. For years the garage had never housed the things it was built for. As a matter of fact, there was all sorts of lost items in the garage, everything except for it's purpose of holding two vehicles. My eyes fall on an ancient ATV, something we declared two summers ago that we would rebuild and take to the cabin in Wisconsin. How exciting it was to have a project we could all work on together, and how even more exciting and laughable when we finally got it running and he drove it down the driveway and the street with four flat tires. It stands untouched since that summer of declaration. There were assorted items from a lost business of hers. Plans, plans, and more plans for the largest garage sale of the century never executed. Old toys strewn on the farthest wall like childhood memories. Distant and intangible. An old entertainment center the same age as me. New street bike tires destined for the rebuild of his old street bike thrown against the nearest wall like a pair of old sneakers. The glory days of his marathons cast aside and forgotten. I make my way through the old white door and push the garage button for it's closure. I stand, a heavy weight holding my body down. To my left, a flimsy wooden door to a basement with the intent for it's reorganization and contribution to a garage sale. Started and unfinished. On the glass kitchen table I see two days worth of mail rifled through by somebody I know. A full sink of dishes. A half full cup of cold coffee. To my far right, a couch with snuggled-in blankets. I feel a twinge in my heart that I cannot ignore. All these day to day things gone by without my knowing. Who had drank the coffee? Did someone make it for someone else? Who got cozy in those blankets? Who had gotten the mail? What was for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Who had made it? Who had eaten it? Was it eaten without me? This place is a fortress of unpursued and lost dreams, and forgotten memories. It is also no longer a home to me because I know nothing of what happens inside these walls any longer. My distance, my lack of presence. I feel the onset of adulthood, the onset of individuality. All these things wanted but now resented, but still unable to avoid. Nothing is constant anymore and it frightens me.

My Little Monsters

My thought process is riddled with tiny, biting monsters. Little creatures with snouts and pointed ears, gnarled claws and flashing eyes. Their jobs are to contaminate- like a contagion in a lab experiment. They creep and climb on the inside walls of my skull, snatching my thoughts and biting them and ripping them- turning these treasured things into blackened, empty blotches floating around in my head. What good thoughts I manage to make, their birth is usually cut short by death. Everything that happens within affects the out, and I see how it hurts my outside world. This catastrophe that no soul knows about me is mine to bear alone unfortunately. I just wish that people understood my restless head, my tired mind.

"I see the way the moon plays this tune though our lights died."

There is a sadness in me that I have realized recently and has been growing with time- and I see now how apparent this calamity is. I don't understand why you aim and pinpoint endless rage in my direction. It rips caverns and craters in my chest and it takes time for me to patch them up. Our short time that we do bond well is only a blink. And then you reopen these ruptures in my heart again and I feel the distress growing each time I have to take your anger at me and re-patch them. I try for you because I care for you much more than you care to see . . . Don't falter, don't shun me, don't hate my existence, just love me, because we're sisters. And when you've figured out who you are, I'll be around the corner waiting for you to come back.

Impostor

She stands, an impostor, in front of me and utters ugly nothings at the people we confront. I observe the way she treats others and strains my relationships. I yell and kick and struggle but it is silence and nothing changes. I cringe with the creeping thought that I cannot control the impostor posing as me, so I let her rage her fury and feel the stab of each word she lets loose at the ones I care about, useless to stop it until I can regain control again soon.

Terror

There is a heightened frequency in the night terrors I have been experiencing. They have no sense and they seriously frighten me. I am usually trying to escape something. My reveries are no different than reality it seems.

"It's the sound of the unlocking, the lift away. Your love will be safe with me."

Ah, glory is the day of the birth of my happiness. I hope for more birthdays like this and that my happiness shall never fade. Many a day had passed until I had finally achieved it. I recall a rainy night and the dim glow of lanterns under the gazebo a year ago. His words gripped my troubles in the tightest of grasps and set them free to the atmosphere, leaving only the flutter of birds and warm palpitations of life reviving my battered and chilled chamber.