Will you watch me?

Oct 8

We sat on the U-Shaped couch, my friends and I in the middle of Pinewood Social tonight. It was a birthday, and we weren’t in a hurry, but each of us held onto something that felt urgent. Something that needed to be said.

We talked about haircuts and the scars we got when we were kids, and boats – the difference in swimming around them and climbing in.

None of it seemed to matter, but it’s all so important. Where did you get the patch sewn on your jacket? That scar on your knee – did you fall off your bike flying down the big hill in your neighborhood, arms and legs flapping? Were you afraid of the fall or did you think, like kids do, that if you let go you really could fly?

Watch me!

I wonder if we really are just swimming in circles- on our way to a boat that’s always over the next wave, a closer horizon. Maybe a part of life is kicking your feet faster to feel okay, but forgetting where you’re going or that your friend is waving his arms at you over his tiny sailboat with a misplaced stopper, waiting to pull you in.

Maybe we lose our magic when we stop being kids. We’re all just grownups wishing on pennies and pointing out the scars on our knees, hoping we can scrape up a bit of stardust from underneath the hardened tissue.

Will you hear the silent stories behind the ones that I tell?

Because sometimes I wonder if I look the same as I feel on the inside.

And why in the same day I can feel beautiful and exactly like a baked potato. And why if I suck in just a little all my ribs poke out but I feel fat in every picture.

I wonder if I’ll ever stop thinking I’m not pretty enough,

Or writing enough,