hand to foot. train of thought.

end of summer, i hear. and i shake my humidity filled fists in the air and scream at things i cannot control. i wear rage on my arms like sunscreen, toxic and streaking in jagged lines. i fill the tub with ice and stick my arms in to the elbows, numb and red and glistening. it is hard to breathe sometimes in heat like this. and i'm only partially talking about the weather. i dump metaphors on the ground and stomp out their juice, drink it from my palms and remark how it tastes so sweet. so bitter.

::

i wonder sometimes what my twelve year old self would think of me. because i remember her so vividly. so wildly sure that she would grow up to be someone inherently different. she didn't realize at the time that you cannot change some of that invisible ore that makes up the soil from which you feed. that sometimes trying so hard to grow into somebody new means you lose the best parts of yourself along the way and then you spend the rest of your life trying to retrace your steps to take them back. she didn't have enough regrets yet to understand that wearing them around your neck like a talisman will only make your journey harder, the road longer, your muscles weaker. she knew so little for knowing so much.

::

forty one. not really relevant in any kind of sociological sense except for the fact i can joke with friends about being the old one in the group and i laugh at memes centered directly around such ideas. i become friends with people on facebook i haven't seen in over twenty years and i still picture them in the hallway, near their locker, walking on the polished concrete of our school wearing the last great fashions of the eighties, right on the cusp of the fashion travesty that was the early 90s. i am also old enough to watch the 90s come back into fashion and i think, wow. i should have saved all those leggings and blazers.