The Champagne Soapbox

[subtitle: things i notice when i focus]

It’s hard to fall asleep in a restful mundane when a screaming inner child hides behind these adult doors. I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes with my chest swollen with pain and throat scratchy sore. I’m on the second floor, downstairs exists two dogs a quiet girl and a smiling boy. Growing up, it was a quiet boy a smiling girl and a blondie with me on the other side of my door. I still fold my hands over my eyes and stare at the glow behind the window because the body keeps score there’s more to my morning than a husky howling at the goodbye moon and the slam of your neighbor’s heavy door. Payten was always up before me, anyway.

Why does the sun go on shining?

Why does the sea rush to the shore?

Why do the birds go on singing?

Going over another day’s morning, under a newish roof, surpassing an okay pay, licking against the grain of my ragged front tooth away. My dentist told me that I grind my teeth in my sleep, but really I just keep things in my mouth long enough that I can taste the color dye. Suck the flavor dry. New people watch my satiation’s demise and feel my eager heart rise. I text my dad once a week, but I… – fuck, I forgot to call when I said I would last night.

A headache started, because I used to wake up to my mom coughing up pollution from downstairs. Four hours away, and I still imagine her voice so easily like it’s relevant to my subconscious memory. Maybe I’ll be like her one day, and maybe I am her just in a different way. She learned what is okay and her eyes ask for kindness when her words rough play. My parent’s mirror reflects my face. I get lost in this independent place hoping that I find peace in drowning mundanity and staring at dead flowers in my mother’s old vase. They wake up and think of me maybe when they brush their teeth, while I just think of myself and the chip that I made in a piece of my smile.

My outfit is already paired together. I’ll change it to something not much better, knowing that the people who will perceive me today will label me with a Gen-Z header despite the fact I had donated that sticky college-aged pleather. I can do makeup under ten minutes now, because I care about skin care more now, maybe taking care of myself better now knowing that at least I’ll have depth to the lines from belly-ache smiles instead of frowns.

I like my face. I like my body. I like this place. I step on a long checkered rug and crease my belly when I brush my teeth. I get a notification that his veterinary appointment is next week.

The drive to the void is a release. Getting the giggles and screams out before the everyday abnormalities cease. Becoming focused is a feat under fluorescent lighting and cubicles that smell like stale coffee or Texas heat. It was more fun to focus when Adderall was freshly necessary.

The coffee pot is cool. It has beans that shake and grind themselves for my pleasure. My co-worker told me his wife’s mother passed away. Her husband’s life was her and now without her, things remain the same unchanged. Still her on his mind at least. He tells me about his upcoming calls, and all I could think about was his father in law how he helped his faith and all but his mother in law who isn’t with us baselines his mind she’s a call he can’t make. The edge of my fingers throb raw after I used my teeth to razor them off in reaction for the things I had to say in passing hallway interactions. It was the most real conversation I’ve had between conversations of product passions and random numbers turned into fractions. I looked in the bathroom mirror because that frown did not feel natural at all. Did my tooth chip again?

Us and them in equal opposition. A cross-stitched hem on pants I bought half off in college and an ink stain from when his golfing bored me. For a while, I could turn myself on for others, but it would make me feel off. Now I just feel on and run along, not for long until I stop and ask myself if anything is wrong. Nothing usually is, because I know myself now – (at least as much as I allow). I don’t really argue anymore. I run away, not for long until I stop and ask you if: “we can work it out together.” Since our problems are related and not new, something humane and an invisible line lassoing me into you. Snap out of it. One dry blink and I return to the Outlook blue.

Routine malaise. A lump of normalcy drowns itself in the rusted tunnel of my throat. My voice leaves easily, not received as noticeably, like wind is a breeze and my words are just a breath to those who picture a version of me for their own pleasing. I don’t mean a lot of what I say, but when I think about it, I do and I downplay it too so we can reach complacent agreement or and agreeable longer conversation by an hour or two. It’s fine when you’re learning how to become an adult – deciding whether or not the communal design is meant to keep you sinking or filling you up with bloat. Or maybe I feel sick because I skipped breakfast. Or maybe I’m thinking too much about his dead mother in law. No, they don’t look at you and see your mom too.

A new day decides on a new design, a deeper smile line. When I’m not at my desk, I’m at epoch with a dark-aura stranger and a shared power line. Through the casual phrases we intertwine, I cherish how my words are being heard from a new person in mind. A new girl decides to step in front of me in line it’s honestly bullshit but my coffee guy sneaks a smile through that invisible string we tied. I look at myself when I’m on camera just to wonder if the environment suits the wandering eye. My hair not tied, thicker liner on my eyes, are those glasses real or do you just like to lie? I like to think when I’m in public, someone is looking at me wondering if I met the right guy.

When I think about the world in detail, what parts are real and what parts did I fantasize?

I focus on today and notice the details about my life that are real and not romanticized.

I don’t live a lie I guess I just see the world through a third eye. Through the mother of mine, she sees her daughter and sighs a sign of relief that I ended up with a life the sun favors frying. Through the strange power line, I touch my table neighbor’s hand and try not to smile. I wander into the record store next door and spend $50 on Elvis because my dad is always on my mind, just not at night. Turns out I’m fine.

I just moved down toward the east of Austin. Driving down my new roads with my windows down is a sign of newfound peace. I feel a bit of release when the duties of my fiscal upkeep are temporarily complete. A restaurant receipt is breathing by the force of windows-down wind and my hair is tangled between sticky sunscreen and hormonal grease. I was so pissed off last weekend that all I saw my heartbeat, but now I’m going the speed limit and notice the letters to the exit for my street. Open my door and see my cat asleep, his lungs expanding and eyes open begging for me to give him something gross to eat. Stare at my tired self in the mirror and notice my mother’s crows feet from squinting from smiling at people I have yet to meet.

Why does the sun go on shining?

Why does the sea rush to the shore?

Why do the birds go on singing?

I am a horribly limited person who always wanted more. Lately, I’ve been trying to focus on the details rather than creating because I’m bored. I spend more time at the movie theatre than I do talking to the Lord. If indecision and reveries are the anesthetics of constructive action, why do I keep analyzing the folds of my brain instead of leaning on my pre-existing explorations? Force myself into a haze (or god forbid, I read a BOOK) in order to have a more informed opinion. I think when I think, I force myself to revive thoughts that were extinct, so much that I think that I think myself into a dark hole where my thoughts remain incomplete or indistinct.

I pull out of the theatre and notice that the “O” in Alamo Drafthouse is slightly pink. The men on the exit of my street, who usually sell fruit, have gone home to their families and fell asleep. My cat noticed me turning my key and ran to meet me at my feet.