Britney

I wake up late every day and remember all my dreams. Albuquerque is a forest and the boy I love screeches at me as I move from the ward to the edge of a cliff in the desert with everyone I held in the Southwest sitting behind me in strict formation. I do not write any of them down.

I go to a school that I can barely stand the sight of and do things that I am almost entirely removed from, like the peeling scab of an abrasion hanging on by a few threads of tissue. The dissociation is second nature emerging as an intense reality, one that I must quietly wait out, like I am hiding in my parents’ closet with an intruder on the other side. I am not here, and yet I am, hence the need for the disconnect.

Things I miss:

  • Eating an avocado with black pepper sprinkled on the viridescent insides every morning.
  • The fresh air that we knew wasn’t really fresh because the farm had taught us that the Kirtland Air Force Base we passed upon entry into the state had contaminated the resources of the people who stared out at us every morning during our 55-minute trek.
  • No New York, except as a past, as if we had all survived some disaster that had gulped up the boroughs and had nothing but the ability to reminisce about our fair city, no rose tint but a simple appreciation that has ceased to exist upon my return.
  • The dim light of the common room when everyone was asleep and I lay in fetal on the small sofa and read from Delta of Venus or Sister Outsider with a grape bunch in a coffee filter by my side.
  • My friends!!! I miss my wonderful and beautiful and absolutely clever friends!! I miss workshops and talking about everything and caring and waking up early to see the sunset! I miss the shed of apathy! I miss you! I miss you!!! ♦