But what of fairies? Do they grant wishes. Fingers on a keyboard, a devotion to notes. Or do they remember your mother for you, when all your brains are focused on whatever life you are trying to build. You play until your fingers bleed, but do you remember the bunny shaped pancakes she made for you on Easter? There was a woman and it came close to love, her chemicals inside of you, her skin was old but you fell in deep. It was back before the Superdome. A homeless guy with a blanket stole her from you, but you can see how that happened. We all went hungry beyond just food.
In a flash your mind is blank. We are covered by clouds, these actual feelings. We put them in boxes. Safely away where no one calls you on it. But there was one girl, who always seemed confused. She didn’t have the heart to tell you how you hurt her and in the same way you never visited your father—always a justification—he was mean when you were only eight. Just look up, they tell you. The answers aren’t where you are looking. The answers aren’t relegated to the heart. Or the limitations of the mind. They are beyond the clouds. Beyond human understanding. Beyond what you once thought was cool indifference.
One day you leave. You are older now, but not too old to feel passion in your veins. You kept the good ones away. You took to the ones that kill hearts. Just like we all do. In the lines of the road, your car chalk, the road chalkboard, you see a future. Something to look forward to. But in the distance is a cloud. It contains all you’ve done to the people you love. It is jagged and not going to produce sound so loud that the whole world will be free. It will produce something unthinkable and it will open you like so many people tried to before. You will be open and you will pull the car over and you will ask yourself where are those people who loved you now? Are they with a new lover? Someone not so shut down. You tell yourself you warned them. But, you never tried to let them in. Letting them in could have killed you, that’s what you never say.
Images by Paul Hutzler
Words by Lisa Douglass
