01172016

At first I thought that you were nothing more than a fragment of my wishful thinking, when I saw you today in those stringent hospital hallways. I almost called out to you, my hand reaching towards your brilliant colors though I knew you were nothing more than a mirage. But then you laughed. It was a tinkling beautiful chiming sound that would have fit in a Christmas carol just as well as it fit pouring from your curved lips. No mirage I can conjure could create that sound. You were there.

You didn’t fit in, not in the house of wasting and regrets. The little yellow sunflowers on your dress crashed too harshly with the unflattering lights, and your bright blue boots looked more like a slice of sky during a summer picnic than plastic meant to last in the weather. You had the same ratty bag with you again, the hemp affair better suited for a hippie preaching free love than you—a proper young lady looking worriedly at the strict podgy woman sitting behind the secretary desk. You were gesturing wildly, angrily. The tall swoon-worthy man wasn’t with you this time, and you seemed so much brighter for it, even though you might have felt larger with him.

But why were you there? I won’t lie. I was happy to see your sunshine in a place so full of wasting blank shadows. But it is still a hospital, and the sun doesn’t belong in a place woven with night and crying mothers and tightly folded sheets. But I—me—I belong here, here amongst the wraiths and the lingering doubts that coat the walls and make the green paint on the walls sickly and the tv in the lounge playing a little too loud—glowing a little too harsh.

I was born in this hospital. I came reluctantly, two weeks overdue and refusing to breathe. A nurse had to force air into my lungs before I finally opened my mouth and expressed my dissatisfaction with the world. At one week, I had jaundice and lived under a special light, away from my family and safely where the yellow tinge of my skin could fade away. At two years, I fell from my stroller and hit my head on a sidewalk, cracking my skull and leaving red drops of my soul stained on the concrete till rain fell to bury me.  At five years, I broke my a