You Can Lie Down
You can't twist yourself into curtains anymore and feel the house disappear, the itchy fabric against your mouth and ears as you slowly breathe in, breathe out, in that fuzzy, muffled cocoon: the kitchen with the sticky table and sink full of unwashed plates, the living room cushioned and dark like the inside of a coffin, the stairs worn out in the middle from the going up and down, up and down, day after day, and the too-quiet landing with the fluttering sound of soft breaths coming from behind the closed door of the bedroom that isn't yours, the bathroom with the cracked sink and the bath that's white but sounds like it's made of metal. You have to walk now, and you do. You step out the front door, knowing that no one will even know you're gone, you and your memory of turning into the curtains. You walk away and leave that nest of houses behind, a dull-enough looking nest but with a cardboard box-like flatness that suggests something terrible hidden beneath a flap, something that makes a noise you can't really hear but is always there. You can put on your headphones, some do, let the bass grind your insides out. But keep going and you know you'll reach that place where the sun spills on the field in a gold light and then you don't even need music anymore. You lay yourself down in that field of gold and even though there's the trail you made coming right up from the house, it's gone, and you see just the ears of the grass waving about it in the breeze and the sky miles up seeming so close you're breathing it in, you're full of all that space and air, it's part of you, the sun like the skin of the girl you'll never meet in real life on your own ordinary, real skin.
