|
By Misti Date: 2003 Nov 15 Comment on this Work [[2003.11.15.03.25.21307]] |
|
She would spend the rest of her days guiding a metal cart down grocery aisles wondering why she wasn't soothed by Huey Lewis and the News and Belinda Carlisle on the sound system. She would wonder why she couldn't get excited over the newest Lysol cleaning product or manage a smile over the new improved JIF peanut butter. There were sales. There were promotions. Two cartons of Ben & Jerry's for five bucks. Bunches of daisies and carnations displayed near the greeting cards and balloon bouquets. She would shop with an empty stomach, a screaming head and a bloated heart. She would wish for a more exotic grocery store...candle-lit and open air like a bazaar in India. Stars glowing over rows of strange produce and loaves of fresh bread. No celebrity magazines. No chewing gum. No Disney decorated birthday cakes. No cases of cheap beer. She would spend the rest of her days talking about the latest Wes Anderson movie or Michael Moore documentary with her mom and sister. She would talk about which celebrities made the biggest asses of themselves at the Oscars. She would e-mail her sister baby names and tell her to drink lots of milk and orange juice. She would be a good future aunt and send her sister Little Golden books and Dr. Seuss books to read to the baby as it grew in the womb. She would try not to be envious and bitter because she could not name or keep her firstborn. She would not hate herself because she was too poor and mentally ravaged to have a baby of her own. She would walk around old, forgotten cemeteries and study the tombstones and the clouds. She would think of her own mortality and make notes to remind everyone that when the time came she wanted to be cremated so no one could mess with her body or view it with bad makeup slathered on dead skin in an overpriced coffin as people who didn't really know or understood her wept to horrible organ music and made comments on the tacky floral arrangements. She would go to Blockbuster. She would go to used bookstores. She would go to Goodwill. She would go to the M.A.C. counter. She would buy and buy and buy and still feel empty and guilty. She would eat hot fudge sundaes from McDonald's and still hunger for something more. She would wear her hair in a hundred different ways and wish her hair was straight or blonde or limp, not full. She would spend the money she wanted to save on books about Britney Spears and all the Real World casts and religion in America and poverty in New York City at the beginning of the century. She would never travel to Italy or Greece or Brazil or Alaska or Spain but she would dream of those places and pretend she had a choice. She would see herself walking the streets of San Francisco, a beautiful waif without a home. She would see herself in Seattle inhaling the mist, lost in the silver. She would see herself on Catalina Island dazed by the sunshine, lost in the palms. She would see herself in Egypt walking barefoot on the burning sand, imagining herself an immortal femme fatale who men fought and died over. She would dream. She would fill her days with plans and lists and agendas. Every square in the calendar would be covered with red scrawls. She would not look over her shoulder and turn to salt, remembering the drunken nights when eternity did not matter and she was young and her body was lithe and fresh and every card was the Ten of Cups and Santa Claus didn't care if she crawled toward Heaven and there were names and numbers and parties and trips to Mexico and she was Zelda and she was Pamela and she was the Empress of Cups the Mistress of Muchness and she was hilarious and witty and she stood up a Delta Chi and auditioned for Hamlet and won over a hundred bucks for a poem she wrote in fifteen minutes about a guy named Evan who had a pet iguana and she dated various men for food when she was starving and danced topless at The Wild Rose and made a film and she cried and was miserable but she was ecstatic and free and she drove her Ford Granada for miles and everyday was a new poem a new song a new reason to shout at the devil and wear the red dress without shame. She would think of changing her name her zip code she would wink at the gods now that her vocal chords were drowned in cement. She would not relent. She would sleep. |