cosmic blues

Water gathers in the creases of my navy raincoat from the village discount outlet. It leaks chemicals in my skin, the water wick materials a total scam. The whole world is a poisonous label. Soak it up with dog pee pads, the dripping ceiling decided on old cookbooks.

I look up at our ceiling, the layer of dim lighting, I see a faint line, nothing more. Maybe the line is imagined, I can see any line I want. Entering buildings of my life, black and shiny, bleeding. Minutes pass and they dry in patches, lifting away.

The students at the jail are writing persuasive essays about why they should use laptops instead of tablets to write the essays. If the tablet is flipped, I see the black and white photo, their mugshot, tucked inside the clear plastic case.

Their writing is better than students “on the outside” for some reason. Maybe they read more or they have more time or maybe they’re cheating. It doesn’t matter to me. In between, I pull out my own laptop and read about students chaining themselves to the gate.

Last night, C and I gazed at the rectangles of pictures, deciding what it all means, the stack. We pulled five cards for me. The bottom of the deck: this card means give or take, in order to gain something, something else must disappear.

Dandelion tea is the color of coffee, and the basement was wet from the rain. The basement window has a door that opens to let out the cave-like smell. At band practice, we talked about CSAs, coyotes in tower grove park, and J’s deviated septum surgery. The lightbulb is wrapped in paper, and the giant bell hangs from the rafter.

Then I’m calling S on the phone at the dining room table, staring at the tree that hangs its branches on the roof. The twigs and arms are still brown and skinny, spidering, I saw a couple of green sprouts originating. SOON. The babybluebird will appear, spokesperson for spring, hobbling down the sidewalk in its new legs!! We talked about our boyfriends and recent fights, solidarity with uncertainty. {redacted redacted redacted redacted}

He showed me how to use the new synth. He showed me how to press down hard or soft on the keys and wiggle them to make vibrato. I played a preset called cosmic blues. I can’t keep up with the world and what meanings are being pressed against the moment. It was my mom’s birthday, we had ethiopian food. {redacted} didn’t want to come. My nephew T led a game of telephone. I sat on the piano bench, letting it all soak in, wanting to be supportive. C made a chocolate cake, the raspberries spelled “L”.

Then H and I drove to the show and watched the band from the back window ledge by the ATM. A girl was crying, her friend left her for a boy and she fled out the glass door, past the visible sidewalk, rubbing her eyes.

I watched the men jumping up and down to the band, removed from their joy. I looked at the smiley face balloon on the wall - in small lettering it said: these materials are safe for children, just as safe as other toys.

When I write this here, I am accepting that it is a pool of language with no future. But I am scared there is a greater spiritual meaning to it all. Am I documenting something bigger, something about to happen, without knowing?

In the writing center, we talked about how AI does not have a mind. It can’t visualize what you’re talking about. Bbbbvvvvvrrrrrrruuuuuuu77777777rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr this is what Lunchie wrote.

It’s windy, so I pulled my hair back with the red plastic clip. I passed by my favorite weeping tree that makes an archway over the path, bustling with purple flowers now, the ribbons of the world. There are other purple flowers like blanket squares on the sloping hill, topped with peach-colored tulips. Drenched in the coolness of green grass, everything contrasts, and then the sun is setting.

I have to cross the street where people are walking their dogs. I turn the corner, walking past the shoulder of the highway. I see the neighbor who plays piano and is a woodworker, he’s mowing bits of lawn with a grass trimmer, and my eyes follow the swoop of his gray ponytail. There’s a sliver of window where I can see the skeleton of a piano inside, and there’s some pillows on top for some reason.

I met him once, in the backyard of the cancer survivor. We followed her back there one summer, to see her mowed lawn, too, the main topics of neighbors, and she told us the story of life. Her bald head was covered with a bandana. The neighbor with the ponytail brought over a baby bunny from his lawn in a basket. She brought out a tincture to put on D’s cyst. This feels like a long time ago. I remember looking at her chapped face, she was crying. She told me, he really loves you.

We went inside her house and D was texting his brother our location in case we got snatched or killed, which I thought was a little much. She told us and the man with the ponytail that we should all hang out and talk more, and have neighborly BBQs and little fires at night all summer. We nodded and smiled, but we never saw her again. There was something about her teary face, her openness, her closeness to death. We needed to avoid her.

Up the hill, I kept walking. I looked at the cardboard boxes people placed on the side of the road: I saw old christmas decorations, and beer boxes, and pink hair rollers with spiky velcro. There were other items I saw on the ground, like trash entwined with nature like a braid. I thought about writing down more of these details in my phone, the crumbs of experience, the after-shell of living, but I swore I would remember when it came time to write this. But I have forgotten.

In the book I’m reading, the narrator went to the yard sale with her son, and he picked out a dvd box set, and then he threw the silver circles into the trees. She said the place where he threw them used to be a gravesite.

Now it’s the type of weather where gray curtains of clouds hang over the sky, sometimes cutting the sky in half, the divider. Before band practice, we stood outside in the post-rain air, and I looked at the cloud formations and the wisps fading into blue above the brick and the spire of a church. I stared at a strange chimney-looking structure on the grass I had never noticed before. What was that? I folded a wet piece of advertisement that got soaked from the short storm, tucked underneath the bone of my windshield wiper.

During practice, I pointed out cat vomit in the corner of the basement, I pointed out a house centipede. We sounded so good, how did we get so lucky, I wish we could play music together forever. T said, maybe we should practice twice a week more often.

There were some small trees which bloomed with white toppings a couple weeks ago, but all those fuzzy neon-white trees have transitioned over to green now. I drove down Cherokee street, under the canopies, and I looked for the white above, but it wasn’t. Spring is always too short.