Ajusting IV

 

IV

Viktor calls me a miracle on facebook chat. We've only met once before. He says have you ever saw someone and just knew they where the best person in the world, and then you saw there photographs and realize they are a miracle? I immediately think of 5 minutes in a library, almost ten years ago, but I've been trying to shut that out as of late. His talk is sweet and brings momentary comfort to my loneliness, but the can of worms it threatens to unleash in my heart is a far stronger force. I'm awkward and don't know what to say, so I take another picture and sign off instead. Its been a week. I just started working again, and a new campaign brings old battle wounds boiling to the surface of my skin, raw and itchy as I buried them in California. Every door I knock on I'm trying to prove myself to the memory of a man whose employment I left in shame and disrespect. Every donation is not enough, every member I could have gotten to do more. I know what I've done wrong after every interaction, yet repeat my mistakes with the next person that greets me on their porch. Its frustrating, and the only thing keeping me from tears is the desperation to prove myself to a memory. I will NOT go down like this. Not again. Not like Greenpeace. Greenpeace, another bleeding gash in my heart presses painfully against my conscious like the clipboard in my half frozen hand. It feels like one of those nightmares when your running from a monster, but instead your legs turn to jelly so you fall on your face over and over again until it catches you. My manager assures me I'm doing better than any trainee and I almost tel him he's wrong, because I'm not any trainee. I'm a professional and this is just a new campaign. The day ends. I make staff quota but its not enough still. My quota should have been higher, because I should have done more. Some of the staff are going for drinks. I know there lingo Want to help me forget tonight? But I pretend to be unaware and slip out the office door to my bus as fast as I can. A new campaign is one thing, but befriending a new team is another emotional process that I'm not sure if I'm ready for, not yet. I'm not even sure if I want to befriend anyone anymore. There's safety in my solitude, and a certain amount of control. The bus comes faster than I expect it to. I listen to classical violin, having talked all day I cannot stand to hear another syllable of language. I let the music drown my nagging memories and focus on what I want to do better tomorrow. At home Brooklyn needs to go out and the cats need to be fed. The dishes should be done but I still don't have the energy for it. The refrigerator looms at me. My stomach burns with hunger, making me nauseous but this is nothing new. I turn away from it and brew a cup of coffee instead. I play guitar till 2am then march the animals with me upstairs for bed.

Though I try to fight it at first, I dream of him.

Adjusting III

 

III

I take a deep breath and step inside an abandoned house on the ridge. His shadow steps behind me. I think I'd say be careful on the floor here remembering how he's twice the size of me, but his memory holds no more weight than that which hangs on my heart so I keep my tongue silent. I'm not that crazy, yet. Brooklyn tugs on the lease tied to my left pants loop. He never likes it inside this one, I think he knows its going to collapse soon, but its my favorite so I ignore him and trudge towards the room I've been meaning to re-photograph. Inside its exactly how I left it. The landscape painting lies diagonal across the floor in a bed of its own shattered glass, the dresser leaning upright against a wall. One thing has changed since my last visit, the ceiling of the floor above me has fallen onto the stairs so that they are completely blocked. Very well, I think to myself, I know I should have never been climbing on them anyway and am thankful the collapse has happened since my last visit. Brooklyn and I would have easily been trapped up their, or worse, but I don't want to think of the dangers of what I'm doing. It makes for hasty, sloppy photographs. Instead I turn my thoughts to my friends back home again. Follow me through this room - watch out for the rubble – there! Ta daaa! Its the best view of Braddock! And there my memories stand with me, on the third story of a building, looking out through a brick wall that is no more.

Adjusting

I

I have been struggling, fighting to begin, anything that is.  The litter boxes go for too long, the dishes pile up until my roommate refuses to scrub anymore.  I shudder at the thought of her not living here, my only reminder to be semi functional, to live a step above the existance of the animals.  I consume my days with photographs.  My desperate cry out to the world, look! This is what I am seeing.  See through my eyes, comment, prove to me I am not entirely alone.  I go through my days in a haze, waiting for anything, something to happen.  This can't be it, this can't be happening, I couldn't have crash landed here.

II

Ghost town rattles and shakes in a cold winter blow, snow piles up.  Today I'll find out if plowing exists for the few surviving inhabitants here, I suppose.  I am defeated and alone.  I make my way downstairs and heat a coffee cup, memories of New York City trail behind me, an invisible cloak around my body, dragging across the floor, brushing everything I touch.  How near I was - sings the sunlight on the faucet of the sink - to finally being in the one place I have searched for my whole life, my home.  How close I was – whimpers the curtains - to him, finally close enough that words on the telephone were confirmed by hugs and hip checks on the side walk.  How hard I fought – screams the porch screen door - to get back there, precisely there, when I realized I was wrong.  All gone, too tired to make the best of it, too fresh from my last odyssey to hope to get back again this time.  I curse their names on the kitchen floor, I'm 21 years old, how could they still do this to me!? I walk to the table and  touch the coffee cup to my lips, then set it back down. The cats need to be fed and the dog needs to go out. Wait, take a picture. Then I get up and begin another day.