this imploding heart

two little star charts, plunge knives into my poor heart

I dug through those boxes of miscellany in the closet for forty five minutes before I found it.

It's funny how something I used to see every day can be removed from my memory for so long and then spring forth with newfound importance 5 years after the fact.

My younger self thought it was absolutely acceptable to wear a gold tinfoil halo almost every day. I'm not necessarily proud of it, but it can't really be helped at this point, can it? I'm certain the myself of 5 years from now will wonder what the hell I was doing in these dresses. We cannot repair who we've been.

I found it on the floor in Sophomore Hall, during spirit week, or halloween, or something where people were getting dressed up for some kind of event. It was simple and stupid, but when I came home wearing it that afternoon, my mother beamed at me.
"There's my angel."

I was wearing it the night I met my first real boyfriend. I walked into a blacklit room in a big white dress and a halo, carrying a bowling bag, barefoot. He was wearing engineer coveralls and, I later found out, was rather high on acid.

I set my bag on the mattress that was covering the floor and put my hands on my hips. "I like your pants." I seem to remember saying it as if I was telling him the balance on his bank account. A declarative statement with little emotion.

"You're from outer space." he replied in the same tone.

Now, it should be noted that this seemed to be a perfectly acceptable response to my statement. For that matter, it still think it's probably the best thing he could have said.

"I think I'd like to try those pants on." I said.

"I have shorts underneath."

"Lets do it."

So my then-future, now-psycicEx boyfriend took his coverallys off in the kitchen, and I pulled them up under my dress.
When I was secure, I pulled my dress over my head and put it over his.
I'm just now realizing how weird this all sounds.

"Can I wear your halo?"

"Mmm. I don't think so."

"It's attached, then."

"For the time being."

I wore it again on our first date. We went to a mexican restaurant for breakfast on a Thursday. We were the only ones there. Afterward, we kissed on a tireswing.
There's a picture of him in the same park on a different day that was exposed in such a way as to surround him in white light in the shape of a human being, but with wings. He would show me that picture and say "That was the future version of the former you!"

it was all very, very complicated.

Posted by Sonya at July 24, 2003 03:21 PM