Wednesday, April 22

Like a pot with the top askew

Alright. Let's run away. I'll grab my gray notebook and a banana; you pick up one of those emergency packs in the front hallway. Meet at the stop sign on the corner, three thirty sharp. I think I'll make some PB&J sandwiches first, though. Wheat bread, crunchy peanut butter, and strawberry jam, just how you like it. I think we should go somewhere without alligators, windy days, and noises outside the window. I'm not going to shut the windows. When it rains, I'll sit on the bathroom floor and listen to it pound down on the pine needles of the tree outside, the wood pile, the leafy bottom floor. A place with no junk food, I'm thinking. No bad quality movies and bed posts that you can bang your toes on. Bed posts hurt sometimes. I know we've been planning for this for a while, and I agree with you. We'll go rock-climbing at that gym first. You can snatch me away after I've had a hard day at school and I need some perspective. I'll bring my Euro textbook and you can help me learn how to climb mountains. My brain feels spongy, at this very present moment. The kind of sponge you toss into the wash because it's disintegrating and you've washed one too many dishes with it when you could have used it to paint something beautiful on your white-washed walls. We'll paint the space on the stairs that's white; we'll get little jars of every color paint you can imagine and paint in stripes. They say stripes are the new black. Oh, I love you all so much. Do you know how my heart aches for you, for you to be home with me? My heart needs you home so I can watch over you, so I can make sure that you are okay, that nobody hurts you. Maybe eternity's not so very far away, but anything could happen between now and eternity, and I just can't let anybody hurt you. So here we go. The sandwiches and bottles of sweet lemonade are packed. I've got a couple of sharpened pencils we won't be needing. Let's run to where we need to go.

2 comments:

Becky said...

This is beautiful, I needed this today. After a day of too much....burden and forgetting what really is important (my kids) and focusing on what really isn't important (my house) My house is still partly a mess and the clean parts don't bring me joy like my kids do. Lets DO run away! Thank you for helping me remember.

Donna Marie said...

I love this. Bravo.