yesnothankyou

“What’s happening in may?” The email from my local library reads.

The violet wildflowers start blooming. My daughter tries to blow them like how you can blow dandelions when they turn into those white orbs. I read that dandelion is French for lion’s tooth. Maybe everyone already knows that but I only just found out. I test out every flower she brings me, pretending to blow. She thinks this is hilarious so I don’t stop.

I take out my old typewriter for the first time in 8 years. I clean all the dust off, I test the keys, I wonder why the apostrophe won’t work right. It feels cinematic almost, the act of caring for it. I keep it in the guest room and think about it but can’t bring myself to use it. I guess there's something cloying about it. Some old thing I buried. I read a story that breaks my heart about two people who become friends on a Nintendo blog. I write a story about two women who fall in love right before one moves across the country. I still don’t touch the typewriter yet.

Dylan buys lots of apples. Pink ones, bright, they crunch between our teeth. We eat them with our knees pulled up to our chests. My hands get sticky.

I don’t sleep much. I have more strange dreams, write down the weird things people say to me in them. “It isn’t finished with you yet.” and “that color isn’t meant to exist, we’ll have to pay for that.” and  “the lights are about to go out but you can pretend they don’t.”

I get more mail from Clare. She writes a lyric to our favorite song on the envelope and I hold it up against the sky. I mean to send her a picture of it but forget. That sky was her, wasn’t it? My friends are different things, but Clare’s always the sky.

I bleach my hair. I tone it after and it turns blue-purple, pastel. The color of a pale bruise. I feel a little like an intruder in my own life. Not in a bad way, though. Billy sends me a picture of his bud light on the beach. Says, “Remembering that fucking awful honda civic from our past right now.” It reminds me of drinking warm coke on a shore.

I buy a new scanner. For the typewriter.

I think about getting a tattoo. I want it to be utterly meaningless. Everything always has some kind of meaning for me, god I’m exhausting. I keep trying to forgive myself for it.

My mom calls to ask if I remembered to eat. She tells me she’s writing more stories about her childhood. She sends one about catching the light from stained glass windows in her palm and her first confession. It's sad, makes my head swim. I want to read them all forever.

I play pop songs so loud, too loud. I dance in the kitchen with my daughter. I dance in the kitchen with my husband. I spin in a circle on the tile again and again and again. I’m one of those ballerinas in a music box. Those music boxes always make me cry. All these metaphors for my pinwheel heart, surging in the wind, plastic and gaudy. I’m dizzy with love. I write the first sentence of something on my typewriter. it's silly, but it feels nice.