The Tin Whistle Menagerie

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Something screamed past me today.

It’s deafening cry drowning out the petty goings on
Of some middle-of-the day-street.

My head was down,
And didn’t see it rushing past,

But it’s thundering bellow pried my ears wide open.

As the howl rolled into the distance,
Where it would surely become the ire of some poor’s soul,
I thought of what I ate for breakfast.

And found that a little odd…

transcribing single-note melodies
to the traffic lights stuttering
and I think that they’ve been telling me
the same damn thing for years

I remember specifically being ten.

My step cousin Chris had made me cry and I pouted as I spat upon my candles to put them out. All I ever wanted was to impress him and all he ever wanted to do was make fun of me.

“Happy Birthday Dear Pee…”

It didn’t quite strike me as a joke and my eyes welled up with tears. I don’t remember my misery lasting very long, my memory shoots to shoving tokens into arcade games
  driving in a fake car
 in a fake race
  on a fake track
 in a fake place
  all inside my little buzzing box.

There were, of course, ball pits and miles of open space for me to romp around with my 10+ guests (of which I remember very few) and yet I wanted nothing to do with it.
I was fine with my little fantasy life for the moment.

I never much formed cliques, anyways. I never found it very fulfilling to follow around a designated group of people for very long… or even a single person for that matter. I guess with the exception of Caitlin I’ve always been content doing my own thing…which sometimes happened to be the alone thing.

I look at the people that I remember being at my party… Anna, Jackie, Jon and Jose. Jolene had shown up at some point and I never quite knew why. I saw her passing on the other side of the glass room I was in and wondered why her focus wasn’t on me. It was MY birthday. She was beautiful and she once loved me. Now I was 10 and a big girl… ever-closer to her own age. I didn’t want to get older, I wanted Jolene to baby me forever.

What narcissism for a ten-year-old to have.

some times you forget how good music is, but one day you’re listening to music and not even paying attention to it really and something catches your ear, and you sit still for a moment or two, and conclude something like, “holy shit, music is rad.”

and then you eat another brownie, and life is all right.

This blanket feels like gelatin. I sit beneath it’s slimy surface melting by the minute. Is this how it ends?

I told you, there’s a story!

Up through the attic, out on the roof where I sat that night

waiting for the tiles to break beneath me.

I received a sickening fright that tore me up inside and said,

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a stroll around the icicles just one last time before they go back home.”

“Home”, I thought, “what a marvelous place.  We should visit soon, Mother must surely be worried by now.”

So, wrapped in a ball, with the weight of it all, the blanket turned in to confetti.