Taste-bud Cinema

I find myself looking for a way to connect. People are all around me and they have a story I am yet to understand. I look at my roommate and see that she has a past and a tradition engraved within her that is different from mine. I find that college community is different from my place back home. There is no Halloween dinner with family or taking baby brothers and cousins’ trick- or –treating. There is no student Christmas celebration over December. Instead students are sent home, tradition isn’t established here. Almost Thanksgiving and I will be going home. The only difference for this holiday is that my wisdom teeth will be taken out and I have to head home early. This Thanksgiving my cheeks will be puffy but not from the mashed potatoes and turkey shoved into my mouth, rather from the swollen gums of yanked out unused teeth, stuffed full of gauze and saliva, possibly blood. The melted browned butter oozing over the mountains of mashed potatoes that smells of roasted garlic and pepper. Lightly browned turkey cooked for hours and freshly baked pies guarded by grandma with a spoon, protecting each pie from greedy grandkids. But oh that melted browned butter.

Purple

Her breath is cold against the back of my neck, spindly bone fingers encircle my waist, and locking me in an embrace I can’t escape.

Her bare feet sinking into the soil grasping the ground as roots of a dying tree. Her ebony hair blowing through the shallow winds and ensnaring into my hazelnut mane, bonding her body to mine in any human way possible.

The smell of decaying flesh and death gases causes my nose to crinkle and my tongue to gag my voice. Sally, her grip is strong as she refuses to leave earth to return to the underworld. Even in her death she still holds some invisible hold to me, As if she remembers what we did to her. She knows of my guilt and how I know I can’t come clean, not without taking credit for the whole incident.

She remembers how we didn’t bother to save her, how we stopped fighting the waves of the water so that she could sink under the abyss of grey water. Never to resurface, but neither will I with a haunting living with my every breath nor dying with my thick muddy guilt.

Time, I suppose, but the more a fall to her demons, I forget about my own and I find I am buried in my own grave with secrets, revenge, and lies. The worst part being that there is no escape, even in death. Sally proves that death should be feared even more because your demons follow you to your last breath and keep you company while you cling to others to avoid the underworld.

Inkling

I am spinning, spinning out of control. The colors blurring together as watercolor across the canvas. Canvas, usually white or parchment dotted with the ink dripping black spots that smear my tears across the page.

Spinning, floating, sinking underwater. Backward thinking across the line of thought. Drowning across the underwater caves of my mind, I find my hand scripting voices to my thoughts and feelings.

Never stopping as my mind fills with country songs and classical piano pieces. The notes and words come to my hand and tingling down my calloused fingertips. Thumbs tracing the indent of the ink of paper, feeling the wet ink as it smears into the fingerprint, branding it in a thick paint. I can hear the melody play sweetly in my head and behind my eyes.

The words have an untamed power pulsing in my chest and drowning the entire room in its mute symphony heard only by the quietest of dust bunnies and my black iPod ear buds.

My words stumble across the last stanza, muttering a whisper of inspiration that I only know the meaning, something special meant for someone dancing in the stars.