There is a stillness in the early evening air, a tender bite through the damp coolness as it descends in shadow across each building on my block. Brick and mortar and tiny blue rooms inside of empty people.
Hearts shriveled and shaking and alone. Funny how loneliness can feel. How a void can feel so full, how the longing fills the nothingness and takes your shape.
There is a small white dog looking out of his window across the street. I am looking out my window, too. I look at him as his little wiry head follows the bounce of a squirrel across the pavement. Wild geese cry overhead, out of sight, and I wonder how the wonder of some things, some sounds, some movements, can stay so fresh and clear for season after season.
To never get old. To never let up. To never say never even when you stopped believing long ago. There is a young girl in her upstairs bathroom studying the lines on her face. Washing small hairs down the drain. Trying to brush the tears and the stains away before he sees her. Before anyone can see.
Does life see itself in itself? Are there notions of familiarity even in creatures who have no words at all, and no dreams?
There is a way the fading indifferent light holds on to something curling inside of you which is closing, as is its time, as is its season.
And this, too, is an ending that you hold in your palm.
And this too, a beginning.
And once more the night slides over as the moon sails up into the midnight black. The piercing of the stars like ice cold twinkle lights.
Remember snow globes? How you were just a child and marveled as you shook and shook the glittered underworld scene.
Kissed a plastic girl who was not breathing. Cursed a severed sky, stone white.
Until the castle disappeared.
Until the looking glass went blind.
Allison Marie Conway 
Reflections of self–self in time, self in a particular space, be it hopeful, fearful, breathing. Wow. The self as time? Expanding into spaces and not just seeing but being. Being the street, the geese, the very cry of the geese. Yes. Even the walls we erect within–delineating where we are safe and where we hurt–expanding outwards. Sorry, Allison, I’m blethering again. When I was a child, my father–an immigrant to this country, who could not afford more than this–drove us somewhere new and special for our annual vacation. And somehow–I don’t recall how–as Papa played his blackjack and Mama bought her magazines from different countries and my brother got a toy of some kind, I was the one who asked for a snow globe. And what is strange to me now, perhaps locked away in one of those rooms inside, is that I completely forgot about this until I read your piece here. How could I forget that? Year after year this happened. And I have no idea what happened to them.
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What a beautiful childhood memory, George. It’s funny I don’t even think I had that many snow globes but I guess the ones I did left quite an impression on me. To hold a little world in your hands, and glitter it all up whenever you please.
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Reblogged this on The Reluctant Poet.
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In moments like this you hope to find a partner to give you company, laugh with you and keep you warm.
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A very kind thought indeed.
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I have felt the same at least in this pandemic… it’s relatable!
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