a sneak peek

The day was beautiful. The sun came from the sky in a new way, one I could not recognize and grew to love as the day became shorter. I could see the street corners and the stones piled in the cracks of the cement, cuddling cozily between grass and curb. I could see the cars rolling along in the streets, slower, it seemed, than the day before. The empty parking lot spread out in front of the apartment, black tar shimmering under new rays of sun. Our playground. We used the parking lot as we would a barren beach or rolling hillside. We veered away from strangers strolling across it and always kept our eyes on the house, a rule my mother had. --I always want to be able to see you from the window, so you make sure you can see me.

Perhaps it was the sun, sending its rays in my eyes like water drops, that gave me my first conscious awareness of myself. It could also simply be that the sun blinded me.

When I came into the apartment after an hour of races across the barren playground with friends, I stopped at the sink for a cup of water. I guzzled, stopped to breathe, and guzzled again. The drinking seemed more tiring than the thirst I was frantically attempting to quench.

I slipped across the yellow linoleum my mother had just washed and hopped into the bathroom, a graceful dance through the dry-spot maze. I could see the blue cotton wash cloth still on the floor, shoved in a corner. My mother did house cleaning the old fashioned way, on her hands and knees.

After unbuttoning my jean shorts and pulling them down, I sat on the toilet and shut the door against the ammonia fumes drifting in. Then I stared ahead, my eyes not noticing the glare off the window or the peelings on the rail of the slanted back porch, which always proved to be in intriguing centerpiece of bathroom-thinking.

Instead, my eyes seemed to fly across the porch and through the air over the black driveway below to the peeling of the muted green paint on the apartment beside ours. My brain had been put on pause, and with it, the world.

I stared at the chips, curling slivers of green and the black and white construction of wood beneath them. I thought of nothing. I had no urge to pick at them, to taste them, to push them flat against the building, as if rebuilding. The peeling paint, I noticed, had nothing to do with me. I watched it.

Then I saw nothing. Everything had gone. I did not notice the blackness coming toward me from the corners of my eyes. I did not notice the light disappearing in the bathroom. I did not notice the window frame sink away. I did not notice the porch had fallen or the apartment building across the way had crumbled. My gaze held the small piece of peeling paint, forced it from the ground, saved it from a crumbling building. My gaze made it levitate in the blankness...until it too disappeared.

I was calm. My mind whispered to me, You've only died. And that's okay.