Solace

By: J.R. Harrington.

Summer presses against your skin, hot and heavy. It tells you of its great desire, and sometimes you feel it, too. The heat always makes you burn up inside, a great roaring flame searing your organs. It is a time of longing, a time of backyard gardens and lemonade. A time where the cigarettes aren’t quite as good, when the storms are sudden and torrential.

It blooms in your chest, a rose, with its thorns. They dig into your flesh, and soft petals caress. The sun on your skin makes you nothing more than a piece of art as you lounge on the deck. It highlights your curves and divots, all the gentle plains of your body. With the wind you quiver, a plant trembling in the breeze.

Responsibility is a far-distant thing, oft-forgotten. It curls up for a nap as the sunshine invades your mind, you become softer and comfortable. You let water take you in, swimming-pool summers just beginning. Your swimsuit is the same one your mom wore in the 90s, you’ve never really had your own.

Hand-me-downs and thrift store clothing, sewn-up things covered in patches. Not quite built to last, still everlasting. Gemstone bracelets click-clacking together, twisting your wrist for the sound. Barbed-wire necklaces, old-school clowns. Tenderly laying yourself down on the coffin, rosebud.

Searching for solace in the shade, keeping yourself from burning out like a star. The prevalence of sunscreen, scented coconut rubbed on barest shoulders. Dried mango sunsets, orangey goodness. Chapstick on dried lips, rubbed in with a slight shimmer. Oil spill smears on lidded eyes, black shadow with glitter.

Giving out love for free, stilted verses and letters left unsent. Waiting by the mailbox for something new to come. Waiting on the steps, tying shoes up to run. Distant driving forces pushing you on, jogging along. Watching the wind move the leaves on trees, hypnotized by their reveries.

Indelicate delicacies, ortolan bunting. Shrouding yourself to hide from God, cowardice. Forgotten scents of flowers long extinct. Wounded and wounding, watching the shows you watched as a young teen and wondering how they changed you so much. A new different kind of person.

The serenade of birdsong drifting through open windows. Air and music indistinct, mixing into one singular thing. Wholesome charades, pretending to be the perfect child you have never been. Dog breath and fur sticking to your legs, tangled hair atop your head. Pomegranate stained fingertips.

Red rushing to cheeks, flushing. Cloudsoft, painted skies and watered down acrylic. Velveteen petals and seed pods waiting to pop open. Hoping for gardens to grow, planted together with grandma. Coffee in the afternoon and cigarettes throughout the day, softly snoring dogs asleep on the carpet.

Supple skin turning red with sunburn. Cat scratched hands and puppy dog bites. Wide open windows letting in the pollen, pushing breezes inward to scratch an itch. Tiger’s teeth and broken bits, rhapsodic delight in fixing things. Canvases coated over and again, hiding memories in layers like a palimpest.

Grandma falling asleep on the couch, always offering books to read. A bag waiting at home and one on the desk in her guest bedroom. Always giving baked goods and snacks, love like a hug in the psych ward. Love that doesn’t mind the way you’re plagued with delusions, love that lasts.

Junebugs in the swimming pool filter. Wasps nest under the deck. Careful, watch your step. Barefoot in the grass, carefully setting your feet down. Cumulus clouds foretelling storms, storms foretelling futures full of moments like these—careful motions, caution in everything. Movement like a ballet dancer, toeing the line.

Ticking clock keeping time. Sunlight drifting through the windowpanes, alighting on trinkets sitting in the sill. Peeling wallpaper and hardwood floors, pried up carpets. Pristine doppelgangers watching through the mirror, waiting to step through and take over once you’ve had enough.

Curvature compatible with broken pieces, puzzling outsides not matching what’s within. A forest soul, a distant leafy thing. Ruins on the west hill, bricks worn down lovingly by nature. Fires in the ruins, graffiti on the walls. Castles that make you feel quite small. Holding down the fort, keeping it with your nature.

Sprinting to catch up with your future self, in the distance, books on shelves. Freckled shoulders holding the weight of the world, keeping your headstrong sing-alongs to yourself. Silly looking dogs scratching and staring at you, licking your hands and wagging their tails. Muddy paws and spotted fur.

Chickenwire promises, cradling hens to your chest. Holding chicks in cupped palms, playing them music. Listen to how they chirp back and forth, a chorus of tiny things. Living with feathered wings and shiny beaks, feathers plucked by violent ducks. Hyping yourself up for therapy appointments, clenching keychains in your hand.

Faltering, hesitation on your lips and hands on your hips. Coffee in the afternoon, vanilla creamer, no sugar. Putting pen to paper, scribbling a million words until everything weaves together, something made and not forgotten. Something worthwhile, ripe instead of rotten. Through the haze of everyday, seizing moments.

Weaving threads of memory together into a narrative, something with weight to it. Slightly bitter, softly untethered. Rubbing body butter into dried skin, ephemeral sheen of oil. Soft skin, always commented upon. Shaky voices speaking powerful words, fisted hands digging in nails. Lapping up love from the concrete.

Cultivating roots in the loam beneath your feet, letting them spread out wide and wise. Muses stringing you along, singing their siren’s song. Belonging only to yourself, keeping your heart in a box so it doesn’t break. Harmonious heartstrings plucked like a harp, keening cries in fading lamplight.

Softening your stony looks for delicate reprieves. Cracking joints and painting your toenails. Thin ceramic mugs, shell-like. Spines curling inward, vertebrates popping out of place. Ribs subluxicating, painfully out of place. Dreaming of distant plains and cigarette silences, smoke from your lips and wind raking through your hair.

Sugar laden teeth and fingerprints on keys. Strands of hair fallen wherever you lay, genetic makeup on display. Remixing the past, smoothing old lines like worry wrinkles. Loving and looming overhead, some forgotten beast made of dread. Constellation freckles on your shoulders, big dipper with an extra star.

Cute little foxhound pawing at you for attention. Wishing you were something closer to a dog, so that getting affection was easy. Softly furred with long ears dangling. Shallow waves on the swimming pool, filled with rainwater, chlorine, and desire. Fueled by the fires your father sets on summer nights, waiting out for moonlit delights.

Walking over the bridge by the hospital, looking down into rushing waters. Wondering what that drop would feel like when water pours against your back. Waterfalls at state parks, sanctioned swimming pools and dark hearts. The hearse follows you, waiting until it can take you somewhere, taxicab for funerals.

Layovers on the plane ride of life, waiting hours just to get moving again. Sitting with yourself in the silence, wondering when you’ll be comfortable being alone. Distant lovers under moth-bitten covers, lavishing themselves with praise and adulations. Saying hello to sinners and saints, self-aggrandizing aggravations.

Memories of not so distant places, camping trips. Waking early in the morning and packing up camp, late nights under the stars. Smoking cigarettes away from the rest of the group, tobacco as a spice. Slicing life into digestible pieces, chew and swallow each moment. Awaking in the eternal lamplight, sunning on the rocks.

You can relate to snakes, they know when to bite. Their fangs are not unlike your nails, grown out into claws to use when you need to. They sit in the sun and lunge at mice, you sit in the crowd and wait for night. When the moon casts its pallor on your skin, you get up and live again. Each distant melody of windsong birdsong rainsong sinks into your cerebrum.

Yesterday’s rain leaves tomorrow, it winds through the distance to sink into your soul. Clouds dropping kisses on your skin, leaving pain in your limbs and fog in your head. Waking in the afternoon, late days wasted away. Good news for a bad bruise, salve on your wounds. Submerged in a state of soft panic.

Vibrancy in the sparks of a lighter, flickering and breaking down. Your brother stealing all your lighters and using them up while you’re gone. Oceans of words swallowing you. Wholly consumed by the dictionary, words like sidereal, celestial things. Bodies made of stardust. Nonchalance, aloof and apart.

Your little sister hates you now, but you still remember brushing and braiding her hair every night. You still remember holding her when she cried. Navigating so many differences, the way life changes overtime. So far off from what it used to be, more afraid now than ever. Terrorized by the future, not the one you had planned for on that big sheet of paper.

Blissful ignorance. Forgetting to fall when you break your heart, leaping instead. The sun on the horizon, that pang in your heart. Compassionate conglomerates promising something great, promises never kept. Patterned things in delicate colors, monochrome. Dirty lensed glasses, frames silvered.

A red leather bag fitting everything you need, waiting to walk to the library. Writing by the big windows with all the plants, surrounded by memories of the past. Old artifacts. Delicious dreaming, delectable savory flavors on the tip of your tongue. Ice cream on your nose, wiped off with an embarrassed smile.

You talk to the mirror and mean every word you say, truly mean it, more than the day to day ramblings. Stark raving mad, the mirror talks back. Listening to your reflections poeticisms and jotting them down for Sundays, when you write all your poems and pepper kisses on your likeness. Strawberry lipgloss and body glitter.

This month you fall in love with yourself, each cell. This month you gaze upon your premature wrinkles and smile at the life you’ve lived. Each moment is a blessing, even the ones where your life felt like it was shattering to pieces. Gathering every forgotten memory like blackberries in a basket, packing up for a picnic.

Wholesome, bathed in soft soil and unburied, unbecoming in your last gasping breath. Exercises in mundanity, forcing yourself to act as a normal person would; underneath you are an obsessive. There is no subjectivity about what you are, only human, only a beast, only something in between.

And every Sunday you sit down and write five poems, one for each finger. And every Sunday you go to the forest, it is your chapel. The steeple is the highest tree, and the bell tolling is the water rushing from the creek. At noon the churchyard sings a song, it rings throughout the town and down to your rocky shore. And every Sunday, you are renewed, like an overdue book.

The water washes over your feet as you dip into the creek, biblical in a sense. Baptismal waters rushing forth, taking solace in your skin.