Dreams, Crying & Broccoli

Walking seems to take a while in this place. Moving in slow steady sweeps. As if suspended in motion. Moving the air around my elastic frame. Air like water – rushing past my surging limbs, resting no where. Rewarded only with the notion that relief will not find my body here.

Dreams are strange. At least I'm not walking down the hall of my high school without any pants. A lot of people have those kind of dreams.

Instead I simply stay there moving but not going any where. My eyes paint me something a little off compared to what awaits me on the other side of the expanse. Colors of what initially seemed to be the true hues of reds, greens and blues are coated with a slick clear jelly. Moving and running ever downwards. Melting the color of this vision into a gooey, slushy mess.

Pain doesn’t exist but neither does hope. Neither does anger and neither does fear. Understanding is a lost cause all together. So I float. Waiting for time to release me from my prison of nothing.

This reminds me of crying...

Sitting there with water coming out of my eyes. The salty liquid sitting in my fleshy sockets long enough for it to build. Until it floods down my face. Dripping, running, oozing.

Sit. Drip. Ooze.
Sit. Drip. Ooze.

Its the pattern of sorrow. Normally the pattern of emotion. Today its the pattern of numbness.

The water liquefying my vision. Running the colors I see together into something that slightly resembles a Van Gogh painting I saw one time in a museum. Or was it in a textbook?

I feel nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing. Just an echo of a sorrow that led me down this road that seems to be leading me nowhere. Staring but not seeing anything at all. Sensing but feeling only the dripping and oozing on my face. I’m not sure what the point of all this is. I think it’s healthy though. Someone told me that once.

It’s like eating broccoli....

They say it helps you grow and it makes you healthy but you never really know that for sure. Since mom always made me eat it I can’t tell you how things would have been different. I probably would have grown to a towering 3’ 11” and weighed 90 lbs as a full grown man. My bones would have been as brittle as Saltine crackers and I would have developed a cough that would've made the smoker lady’s early morning hacking that we could hear from our house as she got the morning paper sound like a throat itch.

I probably would have lost some muscle control and my lower lip would probably have curled underneath itself allowing spit to have full and unbridled reign over my chin and your carpet. Maybe causing me to lisp in the process.

I would have admired other "little people" who had accomplished much in their lives. Take Yoda for example. I would have liked Yoda for his small stature while possessing immeasurable power. But I wouldn’t like him too much because he kind of looks like a little mutated brussel sprout. Which is closely related to broccoli which would remind me of my ever present plight.

I don't imagine my tastes would have changed too much. For example I would probably still like coffee. I imagine my favorite drink at Starbucks, whatever little people tend to get at Starbucks, would always come in a Tall size. Not because that’s all the caffeine my little, underdeveloped body could handle but because I would have developed an affinity for words like “tall” and “largish” and maybe phrases like “biggy size.” Especially "biggy size me." Dreams encapsulated in words. Dreams of what could have been had I only listened to my mom’s warnings.

I suppose crying and broccoli are pretty good things to embrace. Better yet dreaming about crying and broccoli. Dreams about crying while eating broccoli would probably be the most healthy dreams anyone could ever have.

This of course wouldn't be so much a dream as it would be a flashback to those fateful evenings that plagued my childhood.

Tears streaming down my 5 year old face as I came to the horrific realization that the only thing that stood between me and my after dinner snack was a soggy, miscolored bowl of broccoli that challenged a fat 3rd grader's lunch in regards to it's shear mass.

Yeah my life used to be hard. But that's only a distant dream now in my mind.

I've come to enjoy broccoli, providing it's colored appropriatly. Tears come when they're needed. Not in the most pleasant of times but at the right times. Dreams? Well I don't usually remember those. To be honest I'd rather not if they have anything to do with being naked at school.