on the tip of my tongue

All I want to do is write. Painfully, desperately, hopelessly. I feel my fingertips twitching for pencil or keyboard. My brain is constantly on the brink of the greatest idea the world has ever known, like an excellent thought just on the tip of your tongue. I could write a novel if only I could come up with the idea.

SaraLee Speller headed north that day. She was unsure of what exactly lay "north", but she knew that it was a direction she very infrequently traveled, as work was to the west and her social life generally lay to the east, and her parents were oriented in a more southerly direction. North was the direction that called her that auspicious day.


It was not an auspicious day for any particularly outstanding reason. She had woken up at 7:02, brushed her teeth, and ambled down the hallway to the kitchen, where she poured bland cereal and milk into a bowl and arranged four strawberries on a small paper plate. Shortly after that she showered, dressed simply, and left the house. As SaraLee drove down the highway, a song came on the radio that she hadn't heard in years and that she particularly enjoyed. She began to dance all by herself in the car, singing louder and louder until she became determined to vocally overpower the actual singer. In the midst of her personal dance session, she forgot the highway she was already on, mistaking it for the next highway, and took the exit going in the direction the exit off of the next highway would go. In short, she lost her place.


This geographical misstep led her north, a direction she hadn't traveled in quite some time. It took her a moment to notice her mistake, and by that time the song had ended and she had already passed two exits that would have taken her right back in the other direction, safely south, toward her actual destination. It took her another three exits and yet another song to realize that she didn't want to correct herself today. Today, SaraLee wanted to mess up.


It wasn't that work was difficult or tedious or even tiresome: she enjoyed her work well enough, and she was good at it. It wasn't that her life was unpleasant, though a romantic interest would have perhaps added a bit more to the picture. It wasn't even that she felt confined or jailed or whatever people usually say by her comforting routine.


The simple fact was that SaraLee wanted to make a mistake and watch with a curious eye to see where it carried her. She very rarely made mistakes, and when she did, it was something like buying the French blend of name brand coffee grounds instead of the House blend, or using waterproof mascara when she meant to use regular (which was really more of a pain than anything, because waterproof mascara is absolutely bomb-proof and makes a nighttime face-washing regimen much more time-consuming than need be). These mistakes had an easy fix; they didn't particularly disrupt the flow of a routine day.


Driving until water or country boundaries stopped her, however, was not quite as easily resolved. What would she do without her orange toothbrush, her clothes, her facial moisturizing cream? She didn't know. It wasn't really important. She wanted to see what lay to the north. 


Whoa... okay. So my original goal was just to spit out a couple one-liners for possible story starters. Maybe strike gold with a possibility. Gold is pocket change compared to the ideas I have with this, the amount I wrote! I struck a precious gem mine! It's raining rubies and sapphires.

Maybe this is that novel. Maybe this was the idea on the tip of my tongue.

growed up

I wanna be a growed up, with a growed up house and growed up pets and a growed up lover and growed up children. I wanna rock a baby to sleep and crawl into my own bed next to someone I love. I wanna wake up and go to a job I love dearly. I wanna take advantage of nights when the kids are out and it's just us...

i spy

I spy, with my little eye, several missing pieces. Where am I going? What I doing? Where is the light? I'm not thrilled with my life at the moment. I'm waiting for things to fall into place but they're falling apart instead.

Maybe it's just a bad night and I'm letting things get away from me. Or maybe this is a moment of enlightenment, where I let myself sit and marinate in the things I usually avoid.

Or maybe I need another glass of wine.

pillow talk

Sometimes I wonder if I'm just hearing the sweetness of things. Like, how can I possibly make this sound the best? And then I think I'm being untrustworthy. But really...

am I not good enough?
Was I not good enough?

I still wonder why, even though... even though I suppose it doesn't really matter anymore.

a real morning

I wake up slowly and stare at the eleven by thirteen space encapsulating me. Yellow walls press false cheer and rebound the meager light coming through the slats of my blinds as though it were a supernova. I don't feel very good. Perhaps it's because I did very little yesterday to have warranted the amount of sleep I allowed myself.

I stare at a lamp cord hanging out from behind my dresser, a black snake against the yellow walls. I consider putting it back. I've considered putting it back for days.

As thoughts start to cascade into my consciousness, I realize I am awake and not going back to sleep as I had previously intended.

Maybe he'll come. A pathetic thought, and I shake it off immediately. He hasn't, he won't.

I consider what I could possibly make of today. Possibilities wide open, waiting, ripe. It feels like convincing. I could go shopping. There's a litany of reasons batting my idea down, only the most kosher of which being that I don't especially need anything. Ah, the plight of being a twenty-something year old woman.

I could call my best friend. Maybe he'd come. A small voice in the back of my head snorts derisively. And be the cause of disruption to what was calm and peaceful before I dared call? And he's probably busy anyway, if not physically then mentally. A new job overrides his psyche and he becomes very tense consistently until he settles in completely, which could take weeks. He would not come.

I consider the date. June 10th. The day of Shakespeare in the Park, to which I was invited by a good friend. The preset tone of the day knocks that idea away, as well. And endure the heat and humidity and cicadas? I daresay not. And to ride all the way downtown alone, then wander around the park searching for this random group of people, only one of whom I like, alone... no.


I close my eyes.


I could go fucking bungee jumping. I could conquer a new world. I could write the next great American novel, hold it to my chest and cry into its freshly printed pages, whispering "You're finally here". I could drive all the way to the southern-most tip of South America, admire the view, and turn right around. I could fall in love. I could learn to dance.


More likely than not, I will make my bed only to lay on it all day, draining my everything watching TV or playing a computer game. Maybe I won't even make my bed.

troubles

The tension in this house is palpable. And I'm alone. No way out.