October 13, 2002
Wizard of Odd
I felt like Dorothy emerging from her sepia world of Kansas and clapboard housing. The sky was blue gingham and the grass was as glittering as the Emerald City.
Mike and I laid on a blanket in the park, the sun erupting over us like a yellow diamond. My hands made shadow birds against the sky, and when I wasn't nearly falling asleep I was watching him fall deeply so. I pulled on my camouflage jacket and propped a small journal on my be-fawned knees. I wrote a little poem, I drew a picture; my pen stilled when a random father brought his two children from the backseat of a mid-sized sedan so that they might feed the geese. The kids ran screaming and laughing, throwing tiny fistfuls of bread with each shriek. The sky and the Earth mingled and became a delicious teal, and I beamed with the beauty of a thousand worlds, each exactly like this one.
And then I sneezed.
Mike sits up, squinty eyed, roused, and kisses my shoulder.
"Let's go back to my house and take a nap, okay?"
He napped. I played Tetris Attack on his Nintendo 64 and reluctantly woke him up at a quarter after four. He grins at me a moment before he realizes the reason for his being waked, and then he groans.
I wish I could just take him home with me. I wish we could just make a home of his.
Didn't Debra Dickerson say something about not everyone being interested in pursuing higher ideals? Don't some people just want to be with the people they love?
What about when half of you wants one and the other half the opposite?
And isn't that what he loves about me? My ambition, my desire to better myself, my drive and my dreams?
What happens when those dreams don't change but expand to include those things not planned for?
I'll never be able to tell him how much I love him.
He'll never marry me. I don't even know if I want to marry him.
I just can't imagine anything better, you know?
I cut up the Powerpuff Girls wrapping paper he saved for me. Now Buttercup and Blossom and Bubbles circle menacingly about my mirror.
I wish I could burn the candles he bought me. I'd say a little prayer. Just a little one. To no one imparticular. There are starving children and ailing mothers and desperate lovers. I'm just a girl, just a random girl, with nothing at all wrong.
There's just that prospect that terrifies me.
I dream about a car in March and surprises. I dream about driving home in the fog. I dream about Mike getting a real night's sleep. I dream about the end of a novel and the beginning of another. I dream about never having to take Spanish and Political Science. I dream about the close of four years, hopefully a little less.
I dream about Mike, mostly.
He doesn't talk as much in my dreams as he does in real life. He doesn't smile as much either.
He's just with me.
Just with me.
To bed go I, and soon his arms.
astera at 11:26 p.m.