during sunset
i.
I love a good fucking sunset. I mean I think I have about a million sub-par renditions on my phone. Most are familiarly obstructed by my chimney or my neighbor’s low-hanging tree. A few are even from the meek vantage point of my bedroom. An unimpressive, but exhaustive collection. The obsession is ironic because I’m probably the most on-edge during a sunset. I find it very definitive. An ostensibly beautiful alarm clock that I’m out of time. That’s what I associate night with: lost time. I think time may be my favorite enemy. Not under the context of life-is-ticking-away-I-need-to-do-the-most-&-jump-off-a-cliff … I just mean getting through my to-do list. Albeit the list reads more like an overzealous soliloquy. Still, it’s theoretically manageable- but I’m slow as shit, and I mean most of that is the masochistic perfectionism - but the rest is just me... I think.. It is also probably all the stray thoughts. They can drag my minutes into hours... I get lost in my head so much. I tend to blame it on being an only child. That’s a thing I think? They say talking to yourself is a sign of intelligence? could be? But I’ve already misspelled intelligence twice.
My thoughts keep me company, or entertain me, or give life a little more drama, or all of the above. You know, I’ve already reinterpreted our hello four times. In each scenario you were someone else entirely. I’m impressed… you can act so well.
—
ii.
Sunsets are so different in the summer. I can taste the summer sunset. A cacophony of cicadas and crickets lick the air. The humid stink of thirty-degree days sticks to me. The grass is so wet and green, I choose to lay on it and listen, and I’ll watch. I love a good fucking sunset. The ostensibly beautiful alarm clock that I’m out of time.
The winters are different. They’re crisp and sharper.
The wind taints the horizon and I am shivering now. I sacrifice more for a winter sunset. I think that makes them worth more? sacrifice is a declaration of love, Shakespeare and my mother taught me that.
—
iii.
But that’s not why you’re here. Sometimes you get tied up in knots and the knots get so thick and tight you don’t even know where you begin to unravel them. Take a breath. Sink it in. Start. I’m trying to describe waking up and being so reliably terrified that I’ll hear the wrong note, and I will stumble into a panicked symphony of why did you say that? And why do you know so little about this? … unavoidable white noise. Some days I find myself introducing anxiety before my name. I want to make sure you understand I wasn’t always like this. I mean I’m the sensitive listen-to-a-sad-song-stare-out-the-window type. But I’m never here everyday. I mean this is a whole different genre. My heart rests at 99 rpm. I take a sigh to take a breath. and I’ve lost track of more conversations in my head than I’ve attended. Shit. Anxiety takes up the whole room sometimes. It’s more obnoxious than the wind. A bitter peeled onion. I went to the doctor one day, hoped I could explain it away. But it wasn’t biology. I mean it was, but that’s not why. I’ve traced it to a long ancestry of criticism and loneliness. It fucks with you it really does. I couldn’t sleep for a while. I once described it as a house of cards, except the house is me and every card is stacked on a tower of your weak flattery. And when you’re in a pile of cards, all I can think is how it took one thought to get here, and four weeks of self-affirmation to stack myself up. I don’t know why I care. I mean you don’t. You’ve probably been thinking about you. Or thinking about ME thinking about YOU. But I’ve been thinking about Me & U & Them, & honestly it’s not even been me thinking. And I’m not talking about you. pause. It takes courage to build yourself up only ever knowing you’ll have to rebuild again. I’m trying. I really am.