She reads me my rights. You can vote, you can get a tattoo (Mom said she’d take a sterilized needle and prick my wrist a few times to prepare me for one), you can adopt a child… The list ends with silver prongs against porcelain.
My sister conjures a cake. Pale buttercream with mango accents. It's my second choice. I wanted blueberries. Dad said the lavender colored frosting looked disgusting –– “It looks like the worker dragged a finger along the sides to make a spiral design.” He didn’t trust it.
Everyone’s a cake connoisseur now, I say.
My brother texted me earlier. Did I feel old yet?
I didn’t know. We don’t bother to turn off the lights as we struggle with the matches. A blowtorch makes its way to the dining table after a couple minutes.
Silver rimmed, its innards are pale blue. The flickering cone spits out a dull orange, and after a moment, my face is hot against the candles.
I can smell the wax as one collapses into itself. Hot pink liquid drips from its sides, twisting deep into the cool, tender cream. It leans against another green one – maybe it was yellow, I don’t really remember – and starts a chain reaction. There’s laughter, and we’re screeching between the Chinese lyrics to Happy Birthday. The video is somewhere on a sticky digital camera. I’ll watch it later tonight.
It’s morning now. Last night comes back to me in faded Fujifilm snapshots, but I don’t want to develop them. I block it out and redownload Instagram.
It’s 4:00 PM. Mom said she saw some old friends of mine walking their dogs, but didn’t realize who they were until she drove past. She wants me to get out of the house, she thinks I’m depressed.
I’m wearing the two sweatshirts I used as pajamas last night, along with a pair of jeans I picked up from the floor. I walk out in leather sandals.
Winter cuts deep beneath my fingernails, and if I look hard enough, I can see fog fall from my mouth. The outdoors doesn't register in my head, its edges are fuzzy like everything’s been doused in TV static.
I see the beauty I would’ve appreciated a week earlier, but I just want to go back inside. I remember seeing something earlier, about nature, and how the green clears your head.
I hold out a little longer and lie on my front lawn.
It’s nice. The sun bleeds through copper-tinted leaves, and just happens to fall on my face. I close my eyes. If I “look” up, everything’s orange. If I look down (it feels weird, trying to see with my eyelids sealed), it's a little darker.
I find a soft spot in my vision. It’s the wet crack between my lashes, the opening that’d expose my irises to the world. I have to strain to keep my eyeballs still here, but it's worth it; I see the white-to-orange gradient, like the base of an orange creamsicle.
I feel like a kid again. Mom was right to force me outside. I pay a little more attention to the world. I can hear the wind now. It isn’t strong enough to sway the branches, but it blows at just the right speed to make the leaves a little miffed.
If I use my imagination, it sounds like water filtering through the pebbled beach of Positano. It’s cold and I want to go inside. I see mom again. It’s hardly been five minutes, but I’m back.
The kitchen hosts me as I shake off the drowsiness. I want goldfish. There’s a box of it near the back, along with Doritos and cobwebs. I turn my head toward the water cooler.
It’s doing that thing again, where it leaves specters in the wake of water-blocked sunlight. There’s rainbows and white light in the middle of its shadow. I’m inspired. I grab my laptop and vomit all of this out onto the google doc.
I don’t feel like writing a conclusion.
