Poetry: Thursdays, by Tessa Wheeler

 

Undercurrents of a prismic sea ripple across a tile floor, washing up memories, pulling my consciousness from the front of my head. 

I am living, yes, but I am experiencing life behind a shutter.

I am peeking through the worn threads of an Eraserhead hoodie, watching everyone file past in a blue-tinted grain, 

where I am pulled into a 360-pan by the muted swirls of a 25 cent shawl knotted around my wrist. The shallow eyes of anyone with a story to tell bore into my soul and I am thrust into their world. There’s a twisting in my gut as I try to speak but feel the lanyard on my neck tighten, pulled by a coffee scented breath on my cheek. I try to wrench myself from my seat but I am tied down with the wires of a long-forgotten pair of headphones, my feet anchored to the ground in a slick of iced tea. The unfortunates close in, their eyes impossibly bright, spitting their monologues in my face, 

The world spins around me again, and I throw blind punches, this reality tearing into thin ribbons wrapped around my fingers.

Bubbling hope fills my stomach but at the same time the delicious crunch of apathy is crammed into my ears, muting my thoughts, plunging me into a haze. 

My hands, coated in all the sins of humankind, fly to my face, try to block the impending attack. 

Graphite stings against my cheekbones, my brow bone, my clavicle. 

I want to scream as they push their woes on me, yank at the gears turning in my head to try and get them to twist another way, but I cannot because my lips are sewn together with the same red thread that suspends the “no talking” sign above the doorway.

So I stay quiet.

I fill my mouth with tasteless popcorn, wash it down with liquid sugar, and try to blink back tears, ignoring the stares I sense in the darkest corners of the room.

 I feel like I’ve finally found my place there, I tell myself, but in the hours afterward while I walk down cold, empty sidewalks under a starless dome, squinting my eyes at cars that drive by me slowly, I doubt what I’ve convinced myself of.

 

The guilt of the world is a lot to shoulder.

But every Thursday, I come back and do it all over again.