“Up to this point, all I knew were beaten paths, tattooed with footprints, and I had come to the understanding that they were not much fun to travel because so many people were waiting for you at the end, wondering what took you so long.”
-Kevin Wilson: Tunneling to the Center of the Earth

Sunday, October 18, 2015

My bike tire had a flat. I didn't know how to repair the bike, so I took it to Shawn and asked him if he knew someone who could fix it. He pointed at himself.
I left it with him on Tuesday night, so I've been riding this bus from the Little Tokyo back to my apartment in the evenings. It's usually a nice enough day to walk in the mornings.
The bus bounces up and down as it hits various potholes on the road. It's filled with tired looking adults and one small girl with a SpongeBob backpack. She's looking at me. I look away. I would have never ridden the bus when I was that young. Too scared. Too untrusting of people. I wouldn't be able to rely on my SpongeBob backpack the way she looked like she did. She seemed so confident.
I feel suddenly too tired to think about this anymore and let my eyes flutter close. The humming of the bus matches the pace of thoughts slowly moving through my head and it all seems like white noise. After a while, I no longer know what I'm thinking about and forget where I am. Here. The seat is hard, I remember. My black pants are slick against the seat and I slide down until my knees bump the seat in front of me. Soon, I am in a dream like state. No, a street. I'm standing in the middle of the street - somewhere in Collingwood I think. I'm standing in front of my apartment except everything else around me looks like Palo Alto. I'm in two places at once.
"This is not for you," I say, backing away. I'm talking to a shadow and I can feel someone behind me. "This" was displayed by my motioning to the general vicinity. The street in Palo Alto, and Collingwood Heights to my left. It also included four parked cars, seven light posts, a fruit stand, a fire hydrant, and a teenage boy just a little bit younger than me. "All of this." I had no stopped motioning around me, as if for emphasis, because they - the shadow - did not seem to understand. They were still here.
Perhaps I should me more specific, I thought and began to gesture towards myself, towards my heart and my hair and my collar bones. "None of this is for you" and "please leave"; my mouth formed these words but nothing came out, because they still stood there in front of me. She was there in front of me. I could see that it was a she. I looked away from her and at the fruit stand, wondering if it agreed with me - if the presence of this person was just too much as well. I wanted the fruit stand, the light posts and the boy to feel violated by her presence, just as I did. I wanted something to react but I just stood, thinking. "This is not for me." I could feel someone behind me, still, but I couldn't reach to them. I stood somewhere between Collingwood Heights and Palo Alto, California. I wasn't on a bus anymore.
Bus?
I should be on the bus.
My eyes try to open but my eyelashes seem to stick together. I'm sitting down and my chair is still hard, but it's not the one in the bus. I'm sitting on a wooden chair in my apartment. A black satchel is propped against my legs. I lean down to open it and see a piece of paper resting on top of it. "LENNON", is written on it. It's not mine. None of this is mine. I stand up and look around my small kitchen. A bowl of cherries is sitting on the counter, right in the center. Someone has been here.

4 comments:

  1. I really like what you did with our interaction here!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't really have any ideas as of right now but if i just start writing something will probably happen

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't really have any ideas as of right now but if i just start writing something will probably happen

    ReplyDelete