TITLED THREE TILTED REALITIES

Outside you see my smiling waxed lip smile, my perfectly straight freshly whitened teeth, my blemish free makeup spackled skin and my hair cemented into perfection.

Outside you see me picking up the trash, pulling the weeds out of the sidewalk cracks, hosing off the concrete driveway and nary breaking a sweat.

Outside you will hear me laugh expressively (but not too loudly) as my eyes twinkle with delight and I pose for the imaginary paparazzi (satellites and google earth might catch me on film).

Inside, my lips are smudged across my face and into my ear, my coffee/tea/wine stained teeth reflect the ease of my choices, I itch and scratch my face uncontrollably until I break open the sores and stare blankly at my own reflection in the oven door.

Inside I am wading ankle deep through piles of dirty laundry, marveling at how industrious and committed ants are, and wondering when I last hosed myself off in the shower.

Inside I cry without tears, scream until I have no voice left to scream with, close my eyes as I insert my head into the oven door, light the match and wait for the flash. 

On this cold and rainy day, I sit listening to the sound of emptiness that accompanies the sporadic rhythms played out upon my roof and pinging off the gutters in no particular order.

I ask myself, is it order that is missing from this day? It could be. I did not want to stop dreaming and rise to meet this empty day. I wanted to stay inside of myself, inside of the cocoon I had spun around me with warm blankets, inside of that place of no expectations...

Once I did pour myself out of bed, I emptied an overly full bladder, brushed my teeth, washed my face and headed out to the kitchen to turn the coffee-maker on. I don’t know why. I didn’t want coffee, I wanted to return to lands beyond this one, where there were adventures and love stories to be played out in a colorful array of details that make it all the more real than what I was looking out my window and seeing.

I do love a rainy day when nothing is expected and I can slip away into reveries or stay awake and create stories for you to read. In many ways, they are one and the same - yet, so distant from each other in space and time.

Space. I take up such a small amount of space; so infinitesimal that if you were unaware and not expecting me to be here, I would totally go unnoticed. On days like today, I want to be as small as I can possibly be so that time cannot find me.

Time. Therein lies the problem. If I do nothing all day, I am wasting time. If I get busy and work all day, time slips away from me. This elusive and ethereal notion of time. It holds no place in reality. It is not made up of mass yet is possesses volume in our lives. Our delicate balance of a life that rests upon the head of a pin, while we move about like bulls in china closets trying to get to the next project or to run away from all responsibility expected of us.

A delicate balance; space and time. Neither truly exists. We barely exist. Between the drops of rain that ping off the gutters and the sudden downpours that never frighten us, but rather, they draw us under... in between the drops of rain and under the deluge, on a cold rainy day where the only thing to do is wrap myself back up in that cocoon and remain motionless as I drift away into worlds of magic.

I do not exist. (The only thing that tells me different is a full bladder.)

The hours have no respect for my life anymore.

They do not toll the time of my day and tell me what I am suppose to do and when, how to feel and why...

The sun and moon are playing tricks with my mind. I no longer understand the setting of the one or the rise of the other...

The day is tilted.

What day is it?

Could it be yesterday still?

Or maybe tomorrow has begun without me... I have a keen understanding that I am no long standing in today.

Let the dark remain dark, lest I see my own misery. Pull the shades and turn off the lights. I am better at feeling my way.

When the moon is black against the evening sky, I will run wild and free... no one will know, no one will see... least of all, me.

My color today - is blue-green, the texture is like the rough fur on a Terrier, I smell like freshly turned soil and sound like thunder rumbling in the distance. 

My sense is that something is about to happen that is beyond my control - not necessarily to me personally - but to a large group of people somewhere... else. 

I would paint it as disbelief. 

I would sing it like a mother searching for her child.

All of these vignettes (and more... later) are inspired by those who orbit around me, as if I were the sun and held them within my gravitational pull.

I have no such power. Each of you, the true inspiration for my vignettes and short stories here, are my sun, and I orbit around you far out in the cosmos of non-existence where you are unaware that you are the storyteller and I am listening intently to every word you utter.

Thank you for giving me such a gift. You do matter and you are worthy of so much more than you know. You have given a voice to those who remain silenced. Keep talking.

M TERESA CLAYTON