Put Your Heart Back in Your Body

When you arrive at your stop, everyone else had gotten off before you and left you the only passenger.

The sun has been gone for at least ten minutes, but that lingering light still makes the sky a lighter navy blue-not the black chock full of stars of midnight, but an earrlier version.

You sigh and get off the bus, putting the cheap fare in a money box, not even glancing at the bus driver. He probably just wants to go home and get in bed, like you.

It's a good spring day, and people are still outside, trying to claim the dying bits of sunlight in their day. They seem genuine, they're outside because they have a reason.
You wonder what reason could possibly be good enough to be out this late, though.

Your lonely bike is still the only one in the rack, all parts there.

It's red, but the color is unnoticeable in the decaying dark. It seems to be just a dark red and black bike with nothing special about it.
To you though, the bike is one of your loves. The red bike was the brightest red you ever saw. It caught attention when people passed by it. Your parents had bought it for you on a whim. It isn't a hybrid or a mountain bike, it's a nice, everyday quality racing bike. It's a treasure. You are so proud that you have kept up its beauty since day two.

Unlocking the bike with care and caution, you admire it as you pull it out from in between the bars. It's amazing.

From here at the bus stop on Abraham's Way, it's a quick ten minutes home. Ten minutes of you in a pure, exaggerated comfortable side. This is pleasure at its fullest. There's no pressure from anything but the street lamps directing your path.

You smile as wide as the Cheshire Cat when you get home, the wind slowing the pleasant whippings on your face. That was a great ride just like all the others.

You already got the mail, so no need to check the mailbox again. The driveway is clear of any secondary newspapers and cars.

Faraway you hear a dog start barking.
For some reason you remember that a long time ago someone told you that animals could see ghosts, and you have a brief thought of bringing the dog over to your house. But the thought was brief, and you regret it. Ghosts. What a stupid idea that would be.

The stars have some out. Definitely not all of them, you are housed in the suburbs where the light pollution knocks off most of the stars. You miss how many stars you saw on vacation one time when your family went to the beach and camped illegally on the sand. It's such a shame that all of these stars are forced to hide-actually more like they are hidden and have no say about their imprisonment because people are too attached to being surrounded by light all the time. If just all these people in the wide neighborhood shut off their lights before the clock reached 9:00 P.M. then they sky would get to be pretty again. And while they're at it, just stop being on their electronics all the time, because it gets so annoying.

You realize that you were ranting to yourself again. It's a habit.

Unlocking the door is quite easy, and you fiddle the key out of the unlocked keyhole before stepping inside.

The first thing that hits you is the smell of home. You can't describe it though. It just smells wonderful, that smell that's been with you for your whole life, it rocks.

"I'm home," you say to no one and nothing. It's an empty house. You even act like the way you do too much so that even owning a fish would be impossible. The kitchen light is on though. You always leave the kitchen light on.

Maybe you shouldn't be ranting about light pollution when you contribute to it 24/7.

The phone is the first thing you check. There's a little red light flashing and that means messages. Your parents never owned one of those fancy caller-id. phones, and that stuck with you.

One by one you listen to them: a telemarketer calling about kids' toys, another annoying member of a campaign, a local charity asking for donations, and the governor asking for a re-election-from the same party that had called before.

There's nothing usefull, so you pull your wallet from your pocket and toss it onto the island of the kitchen. Then you take it back and walk up to your bedroom on the second floor of the empty house as routine. There's a catwalk that you walk on to get to your room. You like the way that you can see down on the kitchen and the entrance, and the living room from the catwalk-basically, the whole first floor of the house minus the big office.

You also like the way that your room has the longest path than the other three bedrooms. The extra distance is about two meters. It's at the opposite end of the catwalk, where the catwalk ends.
That's your room.
The one that's at the end of the catwalk.

Your room doesn't suck.

The walls are painted a blue. It's the color of the barely lit sky as you came off the bus this evening.
Except for one wall. The one on your right as you walk into the room. It was black. Leftover paint that you found in the basement workroom, used when you had a terribly angry side one day. You try not to think about the day that you painted that side of the bedroom.

Once upon a time, you wanted to paint the room the same color as your bike, so that you stayed up at night forever, long into the morning (As you read somewhere that if a room was red that it would be hard to sleep in.). But you couldn't bring yourself to do it and settled for the dark blue.

The house was filled with your childhood things, so it smelled like them. It smelled like your life because you lived in the house, now for about five months, enough for the comforting smells to absorb as part of the house. It was a fake home though. It wasn't the original, and you haven't forgotten that for quite a while now.

You take off your pants and jacket first, then your shirt, and boxers (Your dirty shoes were off the minute you stepped inside. And all your shoes stayed there.). And walk naked out of the bedroom into the bathroom. It was just the door immediately five steps down and to the right of yours. So convenient.

The water starts cold as always, and you turn the old-fashioned knob to activate the showerhead flow. You feel the water and it's even colder. You count to ten and even though the fake rain is still chilly, you go for it. Routine.
Yeah, you like routine because nothing hurts worse when there's routine and everthing is the same.

Goosebumps spread like fire to dry California grass on your skin. The water is getting warmer.

There's not much that you did today, but at the end of everyday no matter, you feel covered in dirt, grime, filth, and ugly feelings. You wash the imanginary tarnish off yourself with 10 minutes of shower time and whatever cheap shampoo you bought after the cheap shampoo you bought before ran out.

When you force yourself to make that cleansing water stop, the shower tub area still owns a nice hotness and you force yourself again to step outside of it, taking on the bitter cold. It was snowing weather beyond that shower curtain. Pretty unhappy.

So you open the shower curtain and keep the bathroom door open to the house to try and get the perfect temperature. There's a mixed, swirling battle of hot and humid air from where you just came versus the colder and drier air of the regular, unshowered house.
Finally, the two sides stop and reach an armistice. The decision was a tad too cold for you just yet.

The white towel scruffs your skin dry, and it hurts a little today. You have sensitive skin and you wish that you didn't, because it gets to be such a pain in the ass.

You go back to your room across the carpeted catwalk while drying and unfortunately fluffing your dark hair.

A three-day-old pair of plaid pajama pants slips up your towel shredded skin smoothly while a sweatshirt pops over your head with effort. It's spring but you don't bother to heat the house greatly at night in any season so it's always cold. After a few moments, the clothes you put on warm your body nicely. You're comfortable, and now that it's late, it's time to watch the news with pop in hand.