Friday, Jun. 16, 2006 - 9:26 p.m.
Paperweight
She smiles and giggles as she walks outside her house at almost one thirty in the afternoon.
“You’ve been sick for almost three weeks and today you called in sick? Violet, you’re awful” her best friend laughs.
It’s pretty windy outside and “chilly” would probably be an understatement, but here I go with fresh shaven legs, bottled water and beach tote in hand. Off to the beach to celebrate…to celebrate…what are we celebrating again? Oh yes, my best friend’s birthday because you only turn 24 once.
She said it was the worst birthday ever. Last night at midnight instead of hearing “Happy Birthday baby, I love you” or anything remotely similar my best friend was getting dumped by her boyfriend of almost five months. Jerk-off. He should’ve considered himself a lucky guy to have had the time he did with her, but he wasn’t a man, he was a selfish boy who wanted to turn her ugly inside so she could be just like him.
So here comes the best friend to the rescue. We didn’t get a tan but we drank, all afternoon it seems. Was it possible that we drank at every bar we walked into in South Beach today? It must’ve been the alcohol because that would explain the mental brain fart I had when purchasing a $60 bottle of Issey Miyake perfume just because spur of the moments are things women live for. At one point we walked down past the busy shops and I noticed that she wasn’t my best friend anymore. She was walking past me, somewhat stumbling not yet staggering and I realized she was slowly turning into my next poem. It went like this….
As she walks down the busy streets sheets of paper float out of her bag, immediately getting tousled by the irrefutable strong gusts of the March winds and the girl doesn’t seem to notice her stories flittering around behind her and over her head. The more she filled her bag with useless, materialistic things the more scraps of paper fell out. Her fancy, lavish gifts to herself, more like a comfort that she needed that so heavily would slip into her bag made it easy to forget that words, stories, essays, poems, secrets, lies, truths, fantasies, myths and memories were the things that at one time weighed her down. None of those things would let her get anywhere, didn’t let her pick up the pace, never gave her the chance to see if she could do anything else besides the only thing she did know.
One day after buying herself another gift she went home and put her beach tote down next to her and pulled out a little purple bag. Inside this bad, wrapped in pale pink China wrapping paper was a paperweight. It resembled a soap bubble and it was very heavy and beautiful and she couldn’t wait to put it on her stories, after all these years of having them loose in her bag. As she searched her bag she started pulling out all of her new gifts, all her new trinkets and found no papers waiting at the bottom of her bag. There was nothing for that paperweight to hold. (3/7/05)
for: Frances
