No Foes, No Traps

My dad picked me up at the airport. I was very brave and flew in an airplane, all by myself. I had to leave school early, and got called out of the musical assembly in the gym. I made a snowman mitten in art class. I used Green and Yellow. I am excited to see my Grandma. She is old. The stewardess on the airplane said she thought I was very smart for my age. Someone was supposed to sit with me but I got a whole row to myself instead, it was just 2 seats. My dad is telling me about a funny radio commercial he heard. He said that if we listened to the radio we might hear it. I love my dad, he knows every superhero.

I am worried that my room is different from the summertime. I don’t mind sharing my room, but I just want to make sure that my Rocketeer cup and Swamp Thing Toys are still hidden in the bottom drawers.

My dad has a video tape of Star Wars with Yoda. It is my favorite movie I get to watch. It’s snowing outside. I am wearing a red turtleneck.  I am excited to see my new baby brother. He was born this year. I have 2 brothers. I hope no one has touched my Flash Poster. Flash is the fastest man alive. I think he would like my red turtleneck. I would tell him that even though it was supposed to be for Christmas, I am pretending it is for the Flash.  I am a Flash Fan, but I also love the Rocketeer. And Batman and Superman. I am not allowed to watch the Ninja Turtles because they are too violent. There is a part in a Star Wars movie where a guy gets eaten by big monster in a cave. I was very brave while watching that, but got scared by a comic with Martian Manhunter last summer. He made himself look like a demon and kind of like the moon piano man from McDonalds.

I feel sad looking at the snow. I should be happy, but I am sad. My dad asks if I miss my mom.

I tell him the snow is pretty but makes me sad for some reason.

The funny commercial finally comes on, a stapler goes *crazy* and acts like a wild nail gun, shooting Staples everywhere.

I laugh alot.

My heart hurts in a million ways as I stumble through my day. Everything is gone now: the jokes, the mirth, the myth, the will to endure even a moment more without the other half of my incredibly childish brain, my burning heart, my atomic star heart soul. Once permanently overcharged and burning in all directions, now as soft a glow as something can make before the flickering tea light candle goes out.

I’m a blank slate, flummaging from task to task, from sundown to sundown. Ashes to Ashes to Ashes. Cold and never coming up for air except to boil over and crack the heavens with my grief.

He belongs to the stars, now.

I am cursed to walk the earth looking skyward.

There are wounds that heal over, that turn into scars, that twinge when you turn the wrong way on cold days, only just to remind you that they are there.

I’m not an adult, not yet. The experiment has failed. I kick the empty pizza boxes out of the way and take my one hard-backed chair from my drawing table, placing it by the big window that looks out on Winneconne. I am utterly alone. They’re gonna shut my heat off in a few months…it would be off already if there weren’t laws against it. It was a mistake, moving out of the house without savings, or a job that paid me more than 8 bucks an hour.

I’m being kept alive on Little Caesars dumpster pizza, my best friend’s swiped groceries from his mom’s pantry and borrowed gas money.

The snow is so beautiful, falling down, mixing with the piles and drifts, blowing in the wind under the orangepink of the streetlamps. Nothing matters in the silence, not the girl on my mind a thousand miles away, not my stupid friends, those mean spirited/wounded egos I would do anything to impress, not my shift in the rapidly approaching morning.

I am not an adult yet. There’s still time for me to grow, I know it. I hope it’s soon. I hope I don’t screw it up.

I feel like the dark center of the universe. A universe. My universe.

Spring will be here soon, I guess.

My feet are freezing as I lope over a terrace in “the back 40”, where the powerlines grow up high and mighty, stretching their massive arms out with wire that connects us to the world at large, not that I have seen much of it lately. My army surplus boot catches a frozen dirt clod hidden on the ground by dead cornstalks from last autumn’s harvest. I twist my foot in my boot, already freezing cold as I’d already mentioned, now stinging from pinky toe to ankle from the near trip. I don’t belong here, but I do my best to navigate the egos at play, keep out of the way if I can, knowing that even the sight of me can set things off sometimes. I don’t understand it, I don’t like it…but, I mean, I won’t be here forever; someday I’ll be a famous artist.

Or I’ll find a quicker way out, if it comes to that.

I flick the channel again and I’m back to buzzing.

The old furnace in the house works okay, but mom still makes double blanket when it gets really cold. She’ll make us double blanket tonight for sure.

I lurge like a preteen cryptid over the ground, my head buzzing with repetitive thoughts,  scenarios of me beating the odds, finding the totem, becoming popular everywhere and saving the galaxy from the evil empire. I wait at the barn and look for fresh tracks: nothing. I pour on the speed, up between the massive metal machine shop barn and the dirt floor hangar where the tractors lie dormant, dodging tie-fighter strafes and snowtrooper fire. I whip across the bridge that could exist just beyond the tired iron of the ancient thrasher and the inoperable bulldozer.

I’m home-free as I hit the connecting driveway, the cloudy sky still looming just below the sky hook of Xizor and his crime syndicate bounty hunters. Odds are good dinner will be on soon…so I hit the porch, strip out of my coveralls, jacket, scarf and hat, puffing and huffing to my room to hide in my sketchpad until another shoe drops…or dinner is served.

I am walking on an ice covered sidewalk in a warm coat. My head is freezing because I left my hat in my locker, the Barenaked Ladies are singing about the nature of dreams as I turn the corner from Martin Avenue onto North 15th. I pass a bar and a balloon store and another bar. I shake off a slugh of ice out of my collar. Thank God I didn’t lose my batteries down the street drain like last time I ate sheet ice and busted my pride a few days ago. 25 years later, I won’t remember the destination, but I’ll remember the bite of the cold on my cheek, the grey of the sky, the warmness of the coat, the wraparound style headphones with the single drop down cord I’ll lose on an afternoon busride from another high school I attend in a different city,  in a different county, in a different region.  There are so many firsts and lasts ahead, and here I am, 15, my face stung and stinging, headed somewhere, for some reason, with ice in my collar and Steven Page in my ears.

*When you dream, what do you dream about?…”