There is a lull to life. Life often is
just too much for me. I cannot take it, not
alone The world dims slightly when you can't or won't walk through it with
someone else. It brightens in a room of friends, a world of
familiar faces. And when this isn't an option, I go back into
the box. Where my name is unique and people don't easily forget me.
I am sitting on my ass, watching people's names precede their words to me, small words often, but words, like so many nets that trap sealife, bringing them to the surface. I smoke and drink my coffee, and my mouth is reminded what modernity and time constraints taste like. They taste like bitter metal, like when you hold a bobby pin between your lips or a paper clip in the middle of a fluid paperwork motion, like life.
I reach out from the box, to be heard, to be seen. I am the shy girl at the dances at the Rec, back to the wall, invisible. I am the one scribbling in my notebook at the bus stop. You may not see me, but I see you.