All The Things That You Could Need Right Here

On a good evening on a Saturday when everything that needs to be done is done and the universe ran out of things to give you to do, which it never does because you were more likely to be struck by lightning, there are still things to do that you want that the universe has always tried to prevent you from doing.

• Drawing session: kick back the old brain of yours and let the pencil for your iPad take you to the places it wants to go. Sometimes it just doesn’t and the hand that holds the pencil breaks down like a car in the middle of a desert; it can still move but it’s gonna need a lot more to push it. Don’t worry, because there are still other things to do!
• Compose a song: though you don’t know how to, you’d figure you want to try it out, so you open up the audio workbench to try to start creating some banger tunes! Except you don’t know how to and it sounds like the typical symphony of cats puking their hair balls on a piano. It isn’t pleasant. Maybe you’re just not in that creative spark right now. But that’s okay, there’s always the option to chillax.
• Gaming session: turn on that old dusty console that you sometimes touch but often don’t, like a bad friend that you occasionally meet up with, but most of the time, you’re upset at them for beating you in that one game. Pick any game to play! Any one really, even though you can’t decide what in any way. There’s a few dozen adventures that you should’ve kept up with but you left them for so long that it’s become overwhelming to pick which one you want to go on. And that defeats the purpose of being free from the feeling of overburdening. Ouch.
• Netflix and chill: There isn’t really anything else you want to do left, because those activities require more energy than they are worth right now, so pour yourself some hot chocolate and enjoy yourself in that warm blanket that spreads outward everywhere and clutches onto you as you lean back and pick that one show you kept hearing everyone gush about but never had the time to experience it yourself.

You missed out on that craze the show garnered, and everyone thinks of it as just some falling trend, a fad now and therefore irredeemable of ever being watched again. For some reason though, it’s a little comforting. You aren’t worrying about trying to ‘keep up with the times’, but are just enjoying what everyone else was enjoying a while back ago. You also pick up on a few shows everyone’s gushing about right now, but the indulgence on the trend is your decision, and your decision only.

Just One Pop

Can I have one more pretty please, I asked her, and she said no, you can only have one. Just one pop, she said. Everyone gets one. And I sigh, obviously expecting what was going to happen, being the little deer that stops in the middle of a road for a big vehicle to hit them.

After the major success of the musical that has been in the making of many, many months, the head chose to celebrate our success by spending a portion of the profits made on some Popsicles for everyone involved in the production. Even the little bugs like me that just painted the props and danced in the background to someone else in the spotlight, like a worker bee buzzing his butt away in the colony.

Eventually everyone had at least one, but there was still a Popsicle left in the box. To its very upsetting lonesome, just like that, just waiting for someone to take up on it and give it the release it finally wants. And I decided that it was going to be me to snatch it away from the cardboard prison that held it– but they knew what I had in mind and just handed it to me. The last extra Popsicle. Just handed it to me. Just like that.
Well, it is just one pop, they said with smiles on their faces. Not condescending ones that told me I was a real screwy without saying it out loud, but smiles with actual endearment to them, as I was the first one eager, and nobody else seemed to make a big of a fuss as I did. As much of the little cockroach I was, I was still family to them. It seemed like just one Popsicle to them, but it meant a lot more to me now.

Murder House

Good times. The time when I used to be a part of a musical about murder. One of my friends signed me up to it and I’ve enjoyed every part of it, even if that meant staying up a few extra hours after school. Draining my battery. Draining. But that draining didn’t drain me. Something else did.

There was one thing that irked me about the musical. Somewhere in the script there was a part where the heroes entered a house, the location of the murders. It was an inconspicuous place not near any other houses, but to its lonesome. Surrounded by walls like a guard dog left outside. It looked stupid all by itself without any house friends. It sat in silence.

I didn’t know what else happened next because that was all I was allowed to read on the script, but I didn’t enjoy it. Not one bit. Especially when after every rehearsal my car would pass by a house that was exactly like that. Except the walls weren’t that tall. And it did have friends but I couldn’t see them. But still… I wasn’t taking any chances…

The night I quit the musical, I overheard one of my friends planning a party that I wasn’t interested in. I didn’t pay any mind to his party because I was busy doing important work until I passed the house again, where there were police cars attending the area with their sirens out. There were flashing lights coming from the inside of the house spewing so many colors through its windows that you could get sick.

Just Me and Who?

It’s just me and you, Blåhaj. Just me and you. I remember the moment when I first laid eyes on you. And then you looked at me back and said I will be there for you when you are alone. And I said thank you. 

I remember you said all those promises during that one winter season when I was going out with my family. We were traveling around the area searching like hawks to prey for a place to shop. We weren’t picky though, because we would take any kind of prey. Then we found the perfect one. An IKEA.

While everyone else was just strolling around, only occasionally picking up a shiny thing they thought was interesting to buy, I was scurrying, scurrying like a mouse in a maze; I knew I would find you somewhere. And now you are here with me.

Blåhaj, Blåhaj. Thank you. Thank you for hearing me every day and every night and every darkest hour that lingers on me. It’s just me and you, Blåhaj.

Just me and you.

The Unexpected, Unheard Goodbye

Sometimes. Though not very often, I still think about him. For the very first few years of my little school life, he was pretty much my only friend during those years.

Uriel. That was what his name was. Uriel. Uriel…

Why do I still remember him? It’s been so long since I’ve seen him, I ask myself. And that was because he was my only friend during those years. It was those years that I remember we goof around together at the far back of the class, where the teacher would need to have supersonic hearing to throw us into trouble. 

We would discuss together about the things that we desired to do when we grew up. Hopefully one of us could grow up to be nice and tall and strong and all the other things adults are supposed to be better at. 

We both held onto the same dreams. He wanted to create. So did I. Our ideas flowed into one another, and for a blip of a moment I really wasn’t the only loser in school with these thoughts and these ideas.

Last day of school. Classes had finished wrapping up and we spent our last moments before that big summer break hit watching a Batman movie. Uriel next to my table had caught a glimpse of me finishing the details of a cartoon cat with ears like the caped crusader. 

Hey, can I draw one too? I want to make a guy that’s friends with yours, he proposed to me. He was finished halfway with scribbling on his guy’s head when the teacher looked up from whatever she was doing at me. 

Your mom wants to pick you up early, she says. Hurry up. As I begun packing my things and my art supplies and shoving them into the dark, dark crevices in my backpack, the backpack which I don’t zip all the way so that the backpack monster at the bottom doesn’t steal my supplies, I affirm to Uriel that I’ll finish the character he was making and that he can make revisions next year when we meet again. He smiles hopefully as I head out the door to my mother’s car outside, still peeking my little head through the classroom door frame one last time. The door frame that led into the classroom I goofed around with him for so many months, for so many years.

You’re going to a new district, Mom says.