April Flash #5

using prompts by:
Amygdala – spider eggs; cock the trigger; burnt water; flowers for al-anon

Haredawg – The dreams ain’t broken, they’re just walking with a limp; an old shirt stained with blood and whiskey; when it’s snowing in Brooklyn, it snows where you are; ring them bells you heathens

Night rises on the city that doesn’t sleep earlier and earlier as time marches past like a horde of seconds amassing an army. I used to march to that drumbeat, but I sustained an injury that left a few steps paralyzed and out of tempo. The dreams ain’t broken, they’re just walking with a limp, and so was I, these days. Dreams are fragile things, and I lost count the number of times I’d taken the shattered remnants off the cold, concrete floor and pieced them together, misaligned with duct tape or super glue. You could see the seamed scars and the jagged cracks – sharp edges where the pieces didn’t line up just right and left jutting weapons in their wakes. How many times had I sat in that dingy hotel room, surrounded by roach droppings and spider eggs and muttered to myself in the dark “just cock the trigger, you jackass”. I never did. I apparently listened to myself even less than I listened to anyone else. So I wandered the street alone and invisible among the joy of others, watching with vague interest the proof of a normal life but trapped inside the bubble of myself, sheltered from the world at large and the chance for happiness. It was like a cocoon that I was unable to free myself from. And always, the same costume, designed with the intent to keep others away. How many people are going to approach you even on a good day when you consistently wear an old shirt stained with blood and whiskey anyway? I saw the pulse of the city, the bright flashing lights, the neon colors, the sand blowing in from the desert carefully like a mammoth phantom biding its time before designed destruction. Tumbleweeds and sandstorms abounded here. And sometimes I felt like burnt water – an oxymoron, a dichotomy of things not supposed to fit together, but shoved into one package regardless, like sticking a snake and a mongoose in a cage together, and being surprised when only one of them survives. I was poisonous to myself, that year. I built myself a fairytale with no happy ending, a nightmare of consequence, circumstance and change. But nothing ever changed here. I was trapped in the nonsensical world of invisibility, brushing shoulders with others with no real contact. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been touched. I couldn’t remember the last time my shaky hands had reached for another soul to steal, reached for the skin that held their dreams together, now that mine had dripped down like melted wax to pool at my feet before I moved on and left them there, stranded. Still time moved on, it was relentless in its determination, doggedly plowing from one sunrise to the sunset, rinse, lather repeat. Endlessly. And as much as I wanted it to stop, as much as I wanted to pause the second hand from ticking that annoying tiny sound in my head…I couldn’t. That would be a stupid thing to do, and I prided myself on not being stupid. Not now. Not this time. Not ever.

The postcard came unexpectedly, as I didn’t even realize that I had a mailbox in that flea-ridden, insect motel. A picture of a foreign substance – snow. As hot as it was, creeping upwards of 90 degrees even in early spring, I had to remind myself that other parts of the world were experiencing the last dregs of a long winter, reluctant to shed its grasp on the winter wonderland, dumping feet of the cold, slick substance on city streets and creating an ice castle – more firmly placed than my sandcastles ever could be. It was the girl, the forgotten dream that caused my feet to ache with the mere act of standing – the one that made me lose my rhythm, the one that filled the nightmare with the one ray of sunlight. One sentence, and I realized then, what I always should have known. We were connected in this, and the solitude of my sorrow was not solitary at all. “When it’s snowing in Brooklyn, it snows where you are”. She was always into that psychological bullshit, butterfly effects and transcendental nonsense. I loved it. She brought flowers for al-anon to some of the meetings I dragged her to. I used to love that flight of the whimsical that carried her like a weightless snowflake existing from one moment to the next, before melting and filling my mouth with nothing but water. I missed our conversations, more in that moment than I had realized, and it made me think. It was time to get up. Time to move. Time to throw away the crutches and start running – I had a race to finish, and a plane to catch, and maybe – just maybe – the land of bitter cold would welcome with open arms a touch of desert spring. Stupidity is conserved like energy, and while I prided myself on not being stupid – I had been. I was ready to drop my balance, and start again. Ring them bells you heathens, I was going home.

prompts: shadow boxing; puppet master; parade of paradox