This post will be another of my prose pieces, fictional and so fun for me to write. It's entitled Snapshots because it's meant to capture moments. Photography with words, if you will.
Since when does my heart beat loud enough to interrupt my thoughts? My face is flushed, my hands are sweaty, and it’s only 68 degrees. I couldn’t count with my hands the number of times my clothes changed this morning, and my mirror? It was frustrated with overuse before I had even eaten breakfast. Wow, I’ve never seen so many stairs. I feel so tall up here, but also so small; like I’m performing on a stage with an audience, but those watching so outnumber those being watched that you are acutely aware of your own insignificance. Just walk down the stairs, join the crowd. One step, two, three.. Damn! Ouch, that hurts so bad and my backpack has to weigh more then I do. It holds me here, at the bottom of twelve stairs, an anchor to humiliation. A boat, in all of its magnitude, cannot sail away with its anchor moored into the sand; a teenager cannot flee with her backpack glued to the concrete. What is that sound? Laughter- not mean. Kind, bubbly, coming from the direction of an extended hand. Could a hand lift me, my backpack, and my humiliation? Please, please be able to. Thank god. Thank you, Hand, for being attached to rippling laughter and a friendly face. Thank you for being the first to support my weight, and thank you most of all for not being the last to do so.
There are cheers exploding from the bleachers, feet stomping with enough passion to vibrate through the metal structure. Voices roar and sometimes crack with enthusiasm. My voice is one of them, audible but not distinctly, rising and falling with the tide of the masses. It gathers us all, taking no prisoners, turning cynics into fans of a game few of us truly understand. Raw hands, cheeks aching, we send our spirit out to meet our team. The players sense it, are set dancing to our rhythm until crowd and team are in sync. Those watching and those being watched- a harmony. Our connection made tangible by the electric adrenaline between us.
My phone vibrates inside my pocket and displays the text message I’ve been dreading. From Mom: “The results are back, she has cancer.” The room is hot and I am freezing, frozen, fixed to the desk beneath me. I don’t remember what excuse I gave my professor as I ran from the room to make the call; to hear rather then read the news, as if somehow “cancer” was a typo for the common cold. Something, anything, other then what I heard and translated: loss, death, tragedy. Each so heavy and yet somehow able to be carried by a six letter disease. Moving through school is now a process of dissipating, my presence once lively now fades and wears thin. There are so many people in this school, thoughts per person per day. Individual insignificance. My family’s tragedy lost somewhere between the cravings for gum and desires to sleep, a similar prayer offered up to an unimpeachable universe. Who speaks that language, the one whose assonance receives answers and actions of actual satisfaction?
You, what? “I like it, it’s beautifully written.” The crisp paper in my hands takes on a lightness. Pride weighs less then embarrassment, and the paper nearly floats off my hands as I float above the floor to my seat. “Let’s discuss.” There are voices around me, and each one speaks separately and alone. That is, they sound off without competition, but the words link themselves to those spoken before. Our desks form a circle with space in between, space that we fill with arguments and ponderings and insights. We lean on the inside edges of our desks and reach into the filling space as the clean break between distinct voices dissolves and we are all immersed in its contents: arguments and ponderings and insights. Bring it on.
