_{Letters to Strangers}

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Somebody,

I'll need your help on this one. Spring is here, the wind is cold, and I can't seem to find anything that I need to say. I've been having trouble verbally connecting words - I've begun to stumble and stutter and say the wrong words. I think I might be losing it.

I've been meaning to call so many people in the past few days. I've been meaning to get work done - but I can't seem to overtake the feeling of an overwhelming "There is something missing here," and it's starting to take a grasp onto me like a snake would a rodent. A python to a pygmy hamster. I'll need your help with this one.

I've spent the last ten days feeling the ups and downs of an unstable spring. We began with sunshine and 70's, and fell into four days of hail storms and on-and-off snow with rain and wind that blew fifteen trashcans onto the concrete that I walked on. I watched them helplessly as they rolled across the road, into others' yards, into fields, into drainage ditches. There were too many of them, I couldn't save them all. How am I supposed to deal with that?

I've felt the pressure of a semi throwing itself at me while I walked away from a soccer field. I've felt the high of a loud motor, the tingly feeling of dancing under stars on a cold night - warm hands wrapping around my waist. I've overdosed on cookie dough, got food poisoning from one of the most awkward weddings I've been to in my entire life, and read two books. I made brownies. I ate pot roast, and attended classes that weren't mine. I avoided an awkward situation. I slapped a kid so hard he fell backwards into the lamppost and stared at me as if I was the spawn of Satan while his friend stood by, stunned and stoned, waiting for what happened next. I hugged him, he gave me a ride home. I dyed Easter eggs with a group of people that I will never, ever fit in with.

I almost, almost fell off of the face of the Earth...
I'll need your help with this one.

I came home last night, around 11, to the smell of a bouquet my mother had bought herself. I thought it was a candle, she does that sometimes. I came home to the stove clock blinking as if the power had gone out. I came home last night to a incessant beeping from a fire alarm which had gone off far too many times over the winter, and it's batteries had finally begun to give out. I came home last night to a cat being locked in a room with three birds - all of which were fine, including the cat. I came home to my room, yet again rummaged through, yet again re-arranged, even though I had liked it the way it was. I came home last night to everything I hate, and yet I still feel bad that mother has to buy her own bouquet, that my sister still hasn't done the dishes. That I am so unhappy here. I went to sleep feeling that.

I dreamt everyone had died - or, rather, fallen off of the face of the Earth. I was scared when I woke up. I was scared because my parrot was ripping through the sound barrier with his vocal cords, because there was a cat that wanted food and probably hadn't gotten any for two days, because there was a dog scratching at the screen door, because my rotties weren't there and I needed help. I went back to sleep.

I woke up again to the sound of tires on the driveway. No one was there, I had run out to the door in a hectic scare because of another dream. I went back to sleep.

I woke up again to the sound of clicking and static and the faintest voice trying to reach through all of that. The radio had turned itself on. I turned it off. Sometimes I get tired of our machinery having a mind of its' own. Sometimes I wonder if anyone else notices it happen. I laid back down, stared at the ceiling, and what I knew would inevitably happen - the phone rang.

I'll need your help with this one.

Now I sit here, writing this out because I couldn't quite put it into a poem without losing my mind. Now I'm here, smelling the misery of mothers' bouquet, wanting to listen to jazz and wanting to clean up this mess, but being far too tired from three nights of restlessly tossing and turning and being comfortable but feeling too close to crying to even think about closing my eyes and letting myself drift off.

Now I'm sitting here. I'm sitting here listening to soft music, trying to calm myself, knowing that behind all of this restlessness is an image on rewind-repeat.

An image of us spending the springtime, wasting air and tracing infinity signs into each others' skin.