All The Lonely Thoughts

By J.S.V.

Forgive me, whoever reads these words, for I had to register the unregistrable. I find it funny, and mostly foolish, how in the hastened windwhirl of my pursuit of greatness, it is the ordinary’s nectar that my heart refuses to spit out. The golden, tingly liquid jumps from one artery to the next, and if you hold your breath, freeze your limbs, enough so that even the fabric of your clothes will not brush together, you might catch the whispering drumming. An incredible natural phenomenon, although you would be making better use of your time looking straight into a solar eclipse. 

Does it confuse you as well, kind reader? How fireworks boom in that limbo between body and soul during the smallest moments? I blink, startled by the explosion, until Epiphany herself blinks back, as if she is sitting at the table with me, my friend, and her mother. As if she has been there all along, sipping from our cups and nibbling from our plates, yet somehow invisible to our usually so quick, so aware, and sometimes even wise eyes. As if she were there, under the same yellow light on the same cold night, exchanging memories and stories whose sources spring mostly from mistakes. Bubbling up laughter that holds no lies, no interests, no politeness. Laughter that falls from your mouth as your body curls, helping you spill out the songbird who has grown tired of your ribcage, who flies up and out in a melodic cry that echoes through the window, into the quiet night.

And in that fleeting moment of joy, my eyes lock with Epiphany’s, that Medusa’s booming gaze. I quickly fall under her spell. I feel the stiffening crawl through every limb with its rocky touch. And she hisses to me from across the table as the orchestra reaches its peak. She says, “This is it.”

This is it.

It as in the bite of food that might not be your favorite, yet you still have it every—single—time. It as in the half-soft, half-loud hum that buzzes in your throat while you work on your chores. Or the half-sided hug you give to people you have suddenly grown too close to for a full, two-armed, chest-crammed embrace.

And this is it. These people, these stories, these plates, these cups. That house, that laugh, that joke, that tiny tear, that spit of wine over the table. This unexpectedly small, ordinary place in time. And maybe this it is better than all the other moments I have not yet experienced, the ones that disguise themselves as memories from a time the clock has not yet ticked through and call themselves dreams. The it moment of selling my first story. The it moment of making it onto the number one bestsellers list. Perhaps these moments I hunt so intently are simply too loud to hear Epiphany’s boom. Too bright to see her slight, shadowed figure. Or perhaps she has never marked her attendance in these events because they are simply not her place. Because they are not it.

Please, kind reader, do not misread these words as a lack of ambition. I long to be someone in this freakishly overpopulated mess, leaking and stinking of oppressed dreamers starved with hopelessness, as much as the next person. But I swore to be truthful, at least in my written words, and I plead guilty to harboring, even reveling in, a wildly inappropriate idea. An idea that comes and goes as often as the scent of a passing stranger, one who never was and never will be part of my trajectory, yet carries a scent that takes me back to a life I no longer remember. An idea like the common, quotidian experience of spotting a comet in a starless sky. An idea of pure sentiment. The feeling of a dull blaze of boiling water that freezes the bones. A certainty, with no source to reference, that perhaps I already am. Someone, I mean. Perhaps I already am someone. Perhaps I already am. I simply—am.

Worry not, kind reader, my lunacy is short-lasting.

The moment flees after a slight blink, after a mediocre breath, and an equally stupid exhale. And in the unspoken days of relapse into wonderland, I allow myself to miss this absurdity, this illusion of existence in the commonality, with the same intense regret as the “see you later” I cluelessly said, so, so many times, instead of “goodbye.”

Over the table, under the yellow light on the cold night, conversation flows again. But tomorrow’s doubts have already crept in, like reality usually does as the hypnosis of sunset fades with its light. The moment dies, its emptiness soon filling with the prospects of another decade.

Yet… something lingers. I hear it buzzing. Stomping its feet.

Do you hear it too?
I swear it says:

“The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.”
— attributed to Lewis Carroll