you can leave whenever

I want to write. I don't much know what I want to write about, but I'd like to take a stab at it. There's so much in my head that seems write-worthy, but I can't just pick one from the grab bag of choices, is the thing, the conundrum. Why am I a complete cluts at making choices? Ask me if I want fluff or grape jelly and you have me in the pickle of a lifetime. I could see myself as a pickle, come to think of it. Pickles are slippery silly and not similar to anything. What's like a pickle? Not a simile comes to mind.

Anyway, I want to write, but what about is the question. I'm seeing Whoopie Goldberg in my mind, talking to Lauryn Hill and she says "If you wake up every day and all you can think about is singin, then you're a singer!" But the funny thing is, in the movie she's talking about a book and in the book the author's talking about someone else, and in that someone else is this crippling desire to write. Point is, I should read that book.

I should do a lot of things. Like call my grandma. I haven't talked to her in a while. She's a kind woman. But sometimes kind women are the most difficult to converse with. Because it seems they ride on nothing more than puffs of air and speak fragile sentences into the phone that require delicate pauses in-between so they don't just drop to the floor and shatter into bits of consonant and vowel and untidy syntax. Your ear has to turn into a word-pillow of sorts; and this, I suppose, accounts for the awkward silences. I imagine her, right now, sitting on her porch in the cold breeze and bright sun, sewing me something and wondering how I am.

I'm quite well, thank you.

I used to sew. One Christmas, I sewed a pillow for every one of my cousins. Do you know how many cousins I have? I don't either. Anyway, I sewed those pillows and presented them in glorious, regal fashion, holding each one on my forearms like a platter of jewels for a righteous king. But they were just pillows. And I blushed later when I saw they had flattened like rolled-out apple pie dough. I probably should've just made them apple pies instead; I used to do that, too.

Gettysburg is into apple pies. We're the apple capital of the world! Did you know that? Actually, I made that up. But I feel like I saw a sign somewhere, swear to Mr. Snoke! Apples and dead people--what an odd set of interests. Yeah, I'm into apples, I guess. Maybe dead people, too. If you count E.E. Cummings and Ben Franklin, and I don't know why you wouldn't. What can I say, this hammy town must've gotten to me after fifteen years or so. I'm not a native, though. Nope, I used to live in Georgia. Warner Robins, they called it. I feel like Pooh Bear should live there. Used to have an accent, too. Said things like "ya'all" and "yes ma'am" and "Kathleen, you ain't right fer hittin me on the belly with that baseball bat!" because she had. I don't know why I brought that up; I guess I'm still bitter.

Now I live in the city. Well, I go to school in the city. So it's like I have this bubble around me where I don't have to deal with guns or food stamps or the nauseating education system but I can walk down the street and admire tall buildings sticking out of the ground like sprained pinkies and I can say, "Hey, I live in the city," and then people can ooh and ahh and think me courageous for being a small-town girl braving the world a whole two-and-a-half hours away from home.

It's pretty cool, actually.

The other day I saw an Amish family walking down Market Street. And then I saw the most beaten-down, red neck rusty pick-up truck I'd ever laid my fat brown eyes on. This is impressive because I've seen lots of pick-up trucks in my time. I rode in one before. A boy took me to do donuts in the high school parking lot once. And then we skipped school and ate lunch in the parking lot of the Dollar Tree. Then we left. A lot of parking lots, a lot of pick-up truck that day.

Here's the thing that's so lovely about the city, though: unnatural does not mean unnormal. Of where else is this true? Twice now, I've been getting tea at the coffee place up the street and someone has struck up an hour-long conversation with me. Like I'm the conversation matchbox or something. The first time this happened was with a small chatty black man who worked at Barnes & Noble. His name was Henry. I didn't find this out until he had asked to sit next to me outside at the marble table and we had already discussed God and politics and Broadway and the fact that it is simply inevitable for bubble gum to get stuck on your shoe when you're already having a stub-toed kind of a day. He laughed buckets of belly laughs at most things I said. I would sip my English Breakfast and wait a minute til the buckets emptied. I don't know if he was happily high or just really nice, but either way, I liked him.

There's really something about tea in October that makes my heart sashay and my being sigh. Even bad tea is more comforting to me than most things, especially if it's in a hefty mug and just warm enough to fog over my thoughts. It's like holding a newborn baby. They're similar, actually--both warm, little nuggets of perfection. Maybe I shouldn't take on motherhood if I'm thinking cups of tea are just as good as newborns. Still, I've always said, if love were tangible, it would look like my favorite tea mug. Even though my favorite tea mug is pretty ugly. It's clunky brown and definitely not something you'd take to a tea party and show off to all your french-braided friends. Maybe that's why I like it.

I used to take that mug to work every day, yessiree I did. Every day. I used to drive there listening to really calm, zenny-ish music like the Weepies or something and get to work and still be humming to myself, like I was happy to be there. I wasn't though. Not just because it was work but because people with cancer make me sad. I remember walking an elderly woman out to her car one day. She was literally bent in half from fatigue, like a mis-hammered nail. Damn chemotherapy. I don't know why they call it therapy; I sure wouldn't ask for it at the spa. But this woman, she slipped her little hand into mine, and I held her elbow while we walked about the pace of patience. From the looks of it, flamingo pink crocks were all that remained of what had once been whole-hearted, head-to-toe hope. I remember wishing I could drive her home and tuck her in and make her herbal tea in bed, tell her everything would be ok. I remember wishing I could tell her I loved her. Maybe that would be weird, knowing her for only five minutes or so. But I wished I could because it was true. I wonder if she'd've liked that. I wonder if she remembers.