The Champagne Soapbox

Blurry morning sky, and I’ll rub my eyes awake in an hour. Sitting in the shower, feeling dirty and clean. I wish I could ask him to suck the rot right out of my bloodstream. Gentle baby, touch me just to relieve the part of the seams that are too tight and strung. You’re gone, so I press my cheek to the floor. The dirt that pollutes my environment are footsteps walking through the door. How do you tell the girl in the black sheets there will always be a layer of darkness above her? We can watch the same sunset and I’ll still get sad that it has to say goodbye so many times. You have my other hand. Promised me that you would make the time pass easily, indefinitely. I just think anywhere you are is the coolest place in the world, and now I’m homesick.

My sheets were pink before that. Feet on the bunk boards above me and a jumping George on the screen. Double bounce so I can feel high even when you feel like my shadow – in my privileged house with a trampoline and a cat that follows. Held my hand through the crowd when you got too drunk, until we laughed about you getting too drunk and you said you thought I might be too drunk. I thought I thunk myself into a coma, until you woke me up. When I think about it, I feel like throwing up like you made this up. The highlights pulled you out of a funk and I wish you would have just owned it, like this is finally the moment. When you were my other hand, I thought about how you only took care of yourself.

Depollute me. Water me down like rain running from my roof. My window is boarded shut from jumping too many times. Preforming myself into seclusion, and now I’m a magician with a wand and a rabbit. I sit awhile and guess my sicknesses. The shirt I wear that’s not made for me, it’s too big for me, I dried it on accident and now it hugs all of me.

It’s funny that I only feel like myself when I’m not home. Maybe I like being a stranger among aisles. A child looking at normal things in awe. I get along with them all because I grew up with people who say y’all. A sister who answers a second after I call. Would you recognize me in a room full of people and hold my hand again after it all? A hotel room that’s too big for a girl this small. I feel comfortable in public restrooms when I’m the only one in a stall.

Water slaps my window. I think about jumping just to feel the wind, never pain. It would only take a bit of effort to fix this. A bit of money or medications or more isolation. Finding myself in a different place, with a bit of money, medications, and isolation is enough. Music to make the cough go down. For someone so void of emotion, you knew how to make someone cry. That was a while back. I don’t cry anymore, and when I do it’s because I’m thirsty. Staring at the ones left who haven’t left and say “Bailey, I hope you never leave me.” To be fair, I even leave myself sometimes. Not recently though.

My hair is flat from laying down on my back. Rolling around the carpet at the hotel next to the laundromat in a city where I might host my final act. Feet in the air like I’m pushing boards. White sheets with a clean smell, unfamiliar and perfect. Peace is a privilege, and I know myself too well. I know you’ll never see this. I’ve mopped my floors and your name is becoming hard for me to spell.