113 Degrees
I have touched the backsides of so many vintage photographs that my first and middle fingers have turned black. I am fatigued and want nothing to do but to go home and shift through all my possessions and burn. everything. Starting over, bleaching everything, would be so nice, so calm. But then another side of me wants to drag the plush aqua velvet armchair back to Irvine with me-- the floral printed linen pillow cases that my grandmother sewed, too. Frame the slightly tattered and yellowed photographs of her in red gardens. Build up, stand on the shoulders of my ancestral giants. I do not ever know what it is I want. I find so many problems, so many of everyone's contradictions and aggravating hypocrisy that I am confused-- even in the choices that I want to make for myself. I want you I hate you I need you I... hate you. I know nothing. I only know that it is hot here. Unbearably hot, the kind of hot that makes you never want to go to the beach. The kind of heat that makes you think of cancer and sunspots and dehydration. After I sat through being one out of six women not snorting in their own teary mucous in the presence of my grandmother's body, we stepped outside of the room and into a larger space. I even further, away from the loving tender care of the Air Conditioning unit that the mortuary provided us, into the melting, burning, horrific heat both beating down on me from the sky and rising into me from the black asphalted parking lot. There was absolutely no shade. Anywhere. There was no "back of the building" to run to for a quick stoge. Instead I found a 4 inch rim of hot shade to hide my face into. The cigarette was not enjoyable, I could barely feel it. I put it out before it was through and went back in, sucked on a strawberry candy to rid the smell and washed my hands with soap that smelled too strongly. I miss home and I don't even know what home is. I am irritated and sad and angry and bitter. Unlucky but pitifully so.