Journal #3

It's an hour til midnight, but I just can't seem to sleep.

I am restless like I've always been. Thinking about the strangest things. Like, what if I was meant to be born into a dog's body and my soul was switched around? Not in a weird furry, therian creepazoid way, but in a spiritually way if that's even possible. I want to be scratched under my chin, I want to lay down in a sun beam, and I want to follow someone everywhere. I don't know, might just be weird, sleepy talk so disregard it if you want to. 

I can't stop thinking about Mr. Fox's words. They spring up on me when I'm driving through the city. "I don't want to live in a hole anymore." When I was a little girl and nights were still dark, me and my family would lay a mattress out on the grass. The breeze would carry with it the scent of smoke drifting up from the bonfire we made to roast marshmallows. I still remember seeing my first shooting star. I don't remember the wish I made which is a pity. I'd like to know if it came true. But knowing the mind of little me, it probably had something to do with a my little pony toy or getting a good grade on something. That or it was as simple as being happy. 

Another time, I was stepping out of the car and we must've just got back home from seeing my aunt or something because all the crickets were loud. In the sky, two stars flew by and I remember how the sky looked so great and vast above me, but I wasn't afraid. My mother was calling me inside, but I didn't move. I stood there for a while, tracing their path in my mind. I don't remember what I wished for. 

I often imagine myself throwing open a balcony door on nights like this and stepping out into the fresh, clean air. The city or the sea is under my feet and my husband is asleep in bed behind me, tucked under a downy blanket. The tile feels cold under my feet and the air stings of salt, but it's nothing to me. A light flickers off somewhere. A trace of someone else awake at such an hour and being sensible about it. There's breakfast and coffee in the morning, work's been piling up but it's all irrelevant here. 

Dreams don't come true here. Not where I'm from. This is where they go to simmer out and die under piles of trash crowding the sidewalk. Everyone at school talks about salvaging the place, but what good is cpr in a morgue? My neighbor worked at a job firm. A 9-5, steady work she could be proud of. It shut down and she lost her job because no one was hiring anymore. One last cigarette put out and thrown onto the pavement. 

I want to shut my eyes and fly away from here, but not without him. He makes being born here worth it, all 21 years of it. I wouldn't go anywhere he couldn't come along with, makes the journey pointless. If I can't feel his fingers slip into mine or look into those eyes when he talks to me, then I really wouldn't have a damn thing to my name. We're poor but we're happy, living on the prospects we've gently placed on one another. One day we will make it out of here and travel the whole world never without a home. And I'll look up at the sky and remember what I wish for.