3:38 a.m. - January 03, 2004
One of those nights when - why say it? I wouldn't talk about it even if there was somebody to talk to
Again though not like clockwork nor moon cycles, it is late at night and I count the hours until it�s day and I will be fine, and I am afraid. Woke up a few hours ago unsure whether I was dreaming or not, jumped up from my bed with awareness, a piece of the puzzle snapping together. The neighbor, him, he was in my grandparents� house in the country, he must have come with us and this explains the Laundromat on the bluff above the mobile home park right off 80 before the Dutch Flat turn off and just as quickly I remembered the gritty smell of cheap detergent and the cool of cement on my back and I was wearing red shorts, corduroy I think, and it was hot outside, I remember him driving me and the laundry there, a favor because the house was crowded and that only before great-grandmother died and family imploded. He drove my uncle Chris� brown truck and I had an orange soda and I knew the way, and he drove parallel the train tracks and before or after we pulled over and picked blackberries. And I remember crying under a table almost a booth and him pulling me out telling me not to cry and switch channels, there I am and it is cool against my torso and the cement floor has brown flecks in it and we wrestled and outside there was some sound though I don�t know what it was now. It was before the Laundromat, on the little rise coming up from the hollow and the zzzzt off train tracks, he pulled over and that was the first, I remember holding it in my hand and crickets singing the heat, I looked out the window at the purple flowers that grow everywhere there, snapdragons I think but I know that�s wrong, and at his teeth and he had his eyes closed and he finished off my orange drink. All this time struggled with chronology timeline pictures of wrong people wrong places, how could it all come together and not knowing scares me, and I wonder if it was the summer I marched in the July 4th parade, rode is better, because I was on my metallic blue bike with the red seat, the summer after my cousin Tara was born in April and was the first baby I held and I�ve already sent my mother an email inquiring into whether he came with us to the country house and I already know the answer for sure. And the half memory of the Laundromat fits with Rollins Lake and my cousin from Georgia Kelly who was there that entire summer and my learning how to water ski, my whole family learned to ski young on mini-skis for small feet specially designed for rich people�s whims. Discordant half memory of him lying on the deck of my uncle Tim�s boat and buckling my life preserver while I held onto the hand grip and the skis jutted out from me and Kelly and an aunt saying Tim wouldn�t go so fast so don�t worry and I watched him get into the boat, my uncle adjust the throttle, then he looked back at me and winked and I let go of the of the grip. Over and over and over and everybody was angry at me, my uncle Tim called me a girl and I think I cried less over failing water skiing lessons and more about what happened though this is hindsight and apply the clich� as you see fit. These things don�t make it easier for me to fall asleep, don�t make the bogey man slither away behind socket plates biding his time, they don�t comfort me. They make me more afraid because I do not understand appreciate want how they make my head pound and my heart spin and my hands shake and I wish I had a dog not for the company but for the watch he would keep and that is what slays me, that I am at the end of each crevice, terrified and there is never a way out until daylight.
