As the sun hits the horizon, light glazing the clouds with the pastel colors of a Lisa Frank desk set and painting industrial structures in shadow and blaze.
As cars slide past down the freeway offramp, tail lights glowing out like lantern jet trails in the not-yet-evening.
As I walk down the empty sidewalk, sounds around me drowned out by the aching and sweet melodies oozing out of my headphones.
A moment, a feeling, that a camera can not capture, and my clumsy prose can not relate.
Everything drops away. My numb cheeks and nose loose importance as easily as they lost feeling, the cold biting through the legs of my blue jeans reminds me I’m alive. My angst and stress fade into a corner of my spine, removing me 2 steps from the girl who’s not yet sure how she ended up in her late 20′s. Not forgotten, but inconsequential are my unpaid bills, overdue dentist appointments, my waiting dishes, clothing that adorns the floor, far away friends, and the panic-inducing balancing act that I (foolishly, in my uncoordination) am attempting to preform between school and everything else.
A secret strength and purpose rushes through me, and I long for a motorbike, a backpack, long silky hair that will tangle in the wind, and a string of broken hearts behind me.
A lonely wanderer slips her arms through my coat sleeves and I hunger for a pair of samurai swords, a lean, tight body and a mission.
A willful and wild romantic heroine pours out of my pores, curves my lips and closes my eyes as a frigid breeze tugs at my hair, and whispers, as she always has when I catch myself walking alone at a roadside as twilight hovers on the edge of the horizon, “Get your things. Let’s go have adventures.” the same as she did when I was 13 years old.
In my youth I almost headed her siren’s call, barely resisted the urge to strike out with a pack of belongings as a sorbet sky hovered above me–an act that would have surely resulted in cold nights, regret, and a collect call to my worried parents, if nothing worse befell me.
The combination of my nature as a good girl and my knowledge that the fascinating adventures were less likely than trouble and danger for a young girl on her own convinced me to stay put. The logic in me has always grudgingly understood that the world does not conform to the fantastical image I have of it, and even at 13 I knew that the promise spoken in secret code to me by strangers’ tail lights would be broken once the last of the day’s light faded from the sky. That the magic that danced in the corners of my vision would always be just beyond my fingertips no matter how far I stretched, and my fantastical dreams would at best become pale echoes in verse or in line.
But my siren still awakens as the sun oozes towards it’s bed (or, well…the other side of the earth) and if she catches me out, my mind open and churning with lists and anxieties, an empty stomach and too much caffeine (which do not make very good gate guards) she tosses my hair in the evening breeze and opens my green eyes wide to the desolate beauty of the world around me, the endless highways to take me anywhere and exotic night-life of far-away places.
As I step onto my unsalted street I am forced to focus on my steps to safely traverse the icy path, and reality tumbles brutally back into place. The promise of early evening fades, and the exhilarating breeze becomes merely bitter and cold.
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