this imploding heart

the stars at night...

Can I, once again, bring up the fact that the only Chinese restaurant in Coeur D' Alene Idaho has bible verses painted on the windows in that weird faux-chinese font? It's too weird, you guys. It's just too weird.

I think I've quadrupled my body weight in 5 days. Every time I try to go for a walk, my mother says "Oh, Sonya. The roads are entirely covered in ice, and you know we don't have streetlights in this neighborhood. You're sure to be struck dead by an out of control Suburban or something. Eat this pie."
But tonight we did some sitting up, and pushing up, and explaining to dad how we thought the whole reverse pushup thing I tried with Cake really should have worked, and after all that, donned my one pair of pants and went for a walk round the old hood. Here are some realizations, and some re-realizations.

1: Holy Shit, man! Stars!
Yes man, stars. I stared up at the sky, running lightly then holding my feet flat and equidistant to slide over the cement while looking at the stars. I didn't fall once.

2: Walking in snow is an entirely specific feeling.
Like walking in space and walking underwater has got to be entirely specific, walking on snow is like walking through a roomful of sleeping bags, some of them with ankles to trip over inside. Snow kinds of sucks you in. Slows you down. Snow has something to tell you, or something against you, but you probably wont find out which.

3: Big giant houses frequently only have 2 people living in them.
Which is just kind of a weird idea for me now that when you're 2 people, i'ts pretty hard to have your own house. Most houses I know have at least 4. Isn't it kind of a pain to have that much empty house?

4: Dogs, they love to bark. They love to get each other barking. Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark.
It was fun to hear them all, all the differnt dog voices as I walked through the street. Go, Dog, Go!

and when I arrived back at the family homestead, mom was just finishing up her CBS movie of the week. I rented Fargo, but they said the F-word too much, and there was a scene with guys fucking prostitutes so we stopped it. The Post Falls Hollywood Video didn't have The City of Lost Children. Only Cbildren of the Corn, which I didn't care about.

Home tomorrow night. Ring me up if you can pick my sorry ass and 30 pounds of wild game up from the airport.

up to speed.

I almost missed my flight. I certainly missed my bus, and the bus after that, and the bus after that. The bus I actually got on ended up breaking down at the end of the tunnel, so I arrived at the aeropuerte 25 minutes before my flight was scheduled to leave. I took my shoes off at security and didn't put them on again until I was safely at the gate.

Now, pinnacle of panic that I am, one would assume that I was losing my proverbial shit this entire time. One would be, suprisingly, incorrect. Once I woke up and realized that the bus I was supposed to be on had left 19 minutes ago, I threw on my (New! Cozy all-sweatshirt-material! Yet sleek!) dress and put my traveling fate in the hands of God and Metro.

I was delivered into the welcoming arms of the Spokane airport at 8:10am. I changed my knickers, brushed my teeth, tied up my hair and washed my face in the airport bathroom while waiting for my mother.

By late afternoon, my sister and 5 nephews arrived. The boys donned snowsuits and boots and spent the better part of the evening building snowforts and threatening each others lives with pieces of ice.

My father took the older 3 boys hunting at 4am. I spent the better half of the day doing things that, I think, must exhaust my mother. This morning, my sister pointed out that things like peeling potatoes at the sink and sweeping the stairs were making mom get all out of breath. She never says anything about it, but I think she's getting a lot more worn down than she lets on. 25 years of a broken body will do that to you, I suppose. So I scrubbed out the bathtub and put the cabinet doors back on. Cleaned the top of the refrigerator and shoveled the driveway. I hated doing all that stuff when I lived here, but I'm finding that the fewer things my mom has to do, the better I feel.

Dad kicked my ass at checkers 3 times in a row (I have a hard time anticipating future moves.). My 1st grader nephew was scolded for singing at the table (a major problem with all of our family members) and he replied: "What? My voice rocks!"

and I'm feeling better. Not quite so generaly melancholy. The entire town is covered with snow, I just got an invitation to play legos, and my father is lending me a pair of flourescent orange coveralls so that I can accompany him into the woods tomorrow. How could I be melancholy?

Happy Thankgiving, hotpants all.

nothing turned itself

Quite honestly, sometimes caring for myself is too much. I don't want to work, feed myself, have normal social interactions. I want to spend the whole day counting chain links, from downtown to the north end. I want to eat half eaten sandwiches from the discarded trays at the food court and sleep in the bus station. I want to sit down next to you on the 158 and proceed to master my egg flipping skills in an invisible skillet over an invisible stove. I want to hand you an invisible plate and scold you when you drop it. I want to demand your attention, or make you so uncomfortable you refuse to look at me. I've got a zillion tiny teensy granuals of crazy tucked away in my elbows and every day I wake up and check for spikes growing out of my joints. I'm tired of checking my words for accuracy. I'm tired of checking my tone of voice for kindness. Perhaps I'm becoming a heathen. a heather. a horseshoe. Perhaps this dress I made for myself out of normal average common is falling apart at the seams, so pretty soon you're all going to see that my heart beats in 3/4 time and my skull is a piniata filled with one-armed cloth dolls and necco wafers. Please, please, when that time comes, spare me my pride. Stare, mouth agape if you must,

but Please,

Don't Laugh Uncomfortably. I can't bear it a single second.

idle now

Oi,

Cake had to give a speech in public with one of his classmates present, so we went where this guy in his class is bartending. Cake proceeded to get tanked and deliver a 2 minute speech persuading people to be presidential assassins. He came back from the stage and told me he did a great job. Then he told me he sucked. Then he told some random guy that I was going to break up with him any moment now. And we had a short argument about the best way to describe a certain kind of hat. MAN, it was a great night. (and boy, you haven't seen annoyed until you've seen me underdressed in the freezing fucking cold, trying to convince drunkypants to stop singing 'man from the land down under' and jogging next to me as we walk up Denny hill at midnight. I was ready to kill.)

all comb, no style.

It was always better to have dad brush my hair after the bath. Mom had to do it every morning, so she was immune to my winces of pain at little tangles. She'd just grab on to my head and get it done. Dad, on the other hand, was usually still at work after bath time, so opportunities to have brushed hair without wailing like a banshee were rare. Dad would let me sit on the couch in summer, or down by the woodstove in winter. He'd set me on an overturned laundry basket and assess the situation. He'd pull his 10 cent comb out of his pocket and start with the bottom centimeter of a foot of hair.

"Whelp. When I was your age, my mother used to send us to the store with 2 silver dollars. We were to pick up milk and bread, and bring back the change. With 5 boys at home, you go through a lot of milk and bread..."

and he would comb my hair by centimeters as he told me the story of how he and his brother would throw the silver dollars into the snow and then race to find them. One time, they couldn't find the silver dollar, so they went back to where they'd thrown it and threw the other one in the same way, figuring that they could watch where it landed and find them both. (number of silver dollars found: 0 Number of excuses including robbers in striped 'jail' outfits: 1 Number of young Walker butts tanned with a switch: 2)

When all the tangles were out, he'd comb all my hair straight back from my forehead like a swimmer, pick me up from the basket and turn me around. I knew he was done when he'd whistle and say "Now *there's* my girl." and I'd whistle back with my teeth.

"Now you go see your mother for stylin'. I don't know nothin' about stylin'."

The same goes now for my neices, who will run baths at my mom and dads house without permission so that what is usually the worst hair brushing of the week will be done by my father. When dad combs my nephews' hair, he styles it just like his own.

I've been really homesick for my parents lately.

assfaces.

Walking over the dangerous wet leaves in the ass kicking, possibly pants requiring cold this morning, I kept imagining that there were people hiding in the leaves, prepared for attack.

The bank rejected my measly student loan. They Regreted To Inform Me. (Oh Yeah? Well I regret to inform YOU that you and all your minions lick dog shit and metal filings from tennis shoe cleats, BofA. Bite Me Fuck You Piss Off Die)

I told some work people about it and a portion of them became frusterated with my unwillingness to get a credit card. I don't want to. That's it. When you tell me I have to, and I reply "I don't want to", that doesn't mean that I don't understand that this is currently my only option. I'm probably going to do it. I just Dont Want To. What I *want* is to build a miniscule amount of good credit with a set amount of money to be paid in pre-allotted increments.

Have I ever mentioned that these kind of transactions almost always reduce me to tears? I'm having trouble keeping it together. It's just that...

I'm realizing something about myself lately. I'm pretty paranoid. Not so much of people, but of nebulous things. Things are out to get me. The bank is out to get me. The school is out to get me. If I try and talk to them, they're going to push a button that makes a silent alarm go off, and everyone in the bank will respond with one word answers shaped like forks and will refuse to provide options other than "Get a credit card". Last time I tried to get a credit card to pay for school, they said "Give us 300 dollars, then we'll think about giving you a credit card, you stupid cow." When I ask for explainations, they'll tell me I'm too stupid to borrow their money, so why am I going to college at all? Drop out! You suck at basic math! You'll live in a ditch when you get old because you refused to get a credit card now!

I'm freaking out. I gotta go.

Reach for the Sun

Hooray for Polyphonic Spree! It was like bubbles bursting into flames! It was like jumping off the tall rock into the deep water! It was like.....it was like the last time you forgot yourself and sang out as loud as you could. Boys and Girls, plural, were crying. Gracelands floor was shaking and people were full body rocking. This never happens in Seattle. Seattle is a stand still town.

I know it seems like I get all crushed out about every rock show I see, but really, I only write about the ones I really loved or really hated. Folks, do not miss any opportunity you get to see this group. They'll make you smile till your face hurts. I have a super crush on the trumpet player. Cake has a super crush on the sign language interpreter. We're gonna write them a letter.

Waking up the neighbors.

We were fighting like puppies fight. Establishing strength. Determining limits.

I was rolled in a ball, supporting my weight on my upper back and neck with my lower extremeties flipped up over my head. I'm trying to get my heel firmly planted below his collarbone and he's trying to flip me supine without either of us breaking our necks. His knee is under my back so I can't let myself down without pinning myself to the wall. He reaches around to my stomach and makes the worst move possible.

I shriek a shriek that shrieks "Not playing." and he lets me down.

"Are you okay?"

I'm rolled up into a ball on my knees. "Dude, you touched my bellybutton."

He winces and instinctively puts his hand protectively over his own stomach.
"It was an accident. I wouldn't ever do that on purpose."

"I know."

One of the greatest things about that kid is that he hates having his bellybutton touched almost as much as I do. His house is one of the 2 places in all the world where it's perfectly safe to stretch. And in all fairness, I rolled over and hit him in the nuts in my sleep 2 days later. It was terrible.

(This message brought to you by the Don't Ever Touch My Bellybutton Commission, sponsored in part by the Society for Never Ever Hitting People in the Balls)

In regards to Tuesdays, Thursdays.

Parabolas, I'm getting an understanding of you, and I see why you're useful now. You've been unbanished. I'm sorry about that thing I said.

Quadratic Equation, you make things change signs too much, but I appreciate that you're applicable to nearly everything.

Functions....just you wait. I'm gonna get you yet. As soon as I figure out who always lives on the x axis and who always lives on the y. I still don't see why we're jumping tracks at this point, but I'm willing to give you another month or so.

Jenny the math teacher: I wonder if Idaho shows through me as much as it does through you.

Guy who showed up on the first cold day in a Fallout Records hoodie, even Dana thinks you're sexy, and she's as lesbian as they come.

Just a brief example of how I'm wasting my invaluable youth:

"Okay here's what I want to do."

It's midnight and we're sitting on the couch. I've spent most of this evening considering the Push Up, and whether or not my new exercise plan is going to work.

"I'm going to lay on the floor and you lay over the top of me and I'm going to bench press you, except longways."

He looks over at me and puts his tongue against the inner rim of his lower lip, furrows his eyebrows. "What?"

"Can I?"

"You mean, do I think you can do it, or will I lay over the top of you and let you try to bench me?"

So I lay on the floor in my slip and socks and get ready. He starts to lay over me perpendicular, and I have to kind of punch him in the gut to get the idea across.

"NO! Like a push up, except I'm pushing you up. You lay the length of me and put your toes on the ground and *I* push *you* up."

He gets the idea and complies. He holds his muscles stiff like a board. I grab on to his arms like handrails and PUSH.....

and PUSH....

and nothing happens. I can't fucking do it and I'm starting to hyperventilate because I'm laughing with his weight on top of me, stiff like a board.

"Are you satisfied now?"

"Why was that so much harder than a push up?"

Man, the excitement never ends.

I went home for lunch yesterday and watched 'The Joy of Painting' while eating cous cous with tomatos and green pepper. Bob had 3 baby squirrells on his show and he was feeding them out of a bottle in the beginning segment. He went on to paint a winter scene with a warm sunrise and a snowcapped mountain and a few happy little trees with mist to create levels. He gently tapped the canvas with his brushes while he talked about how he raises baby squirrells at home and how his mom likes to come over and feed them. "She really gets a kick out of it" he said. And he talked about how we should care for our fellow man and our fellow creature and how the earth was too beautiful and precious to waste, and followed it up with a little chuckle "But I'll stop my environmental chit chat now, lets put a happy little shrub over here under our tree. Now, your shrubs can be wherever you like, as many or as few, i really want your paintings to be *yours*, creativity really feeds the soul." Bob Ross has the most soothing voice ever, and I would watch that man do anything. I like how he takes a half an hour, tells little stories, and paints a complete picture that's better than anything I'd ever be able to do.
When the show was over and I was walking back to work, I got really sad. I missed Bob and his ever-soothing voice.

I know.

Anyway. Cake called to say hello. I told him The Joy of Painting made me so happy I was sad. He said I was a wimp, but it was okay to be sad about it for a little while "Just keep it in check, I know how you get.". I told Jack about my experience of public television grief later that evening, and I noted that the voice of Bob Ross is kind of like the voice of God.
Jack said it was perfectly logical that God created the earth by painting it on PBS and feeding squirrells to soothe my heart while I ate cous cous on my lunchbreak.

and every broken pepper shaker

I've been wanting to write you a story to have for just your own. I get started, but then don't know how to bundle it up in a bite-size package. The story I want to write you is a bit of a bull. Charging around. Your heart was once a bullpen where all the dishes were there for the breaking, now a china shoppe where others use feather dusters and tread correctly on the narrow stairs. I don't want to break anything, but all I seem to have are these charging around words. Laughing. Bricks. Shoes. Naked. Eyepatches. Battle Wounds. Esperanto. Drawbridge.

I have a secret. I take my favorite words of yours and pretend they're about me. I take the ones I like very best and I imagine you thinking of all the kind and terrible things I've done, and then sitting down to write. And maybe this is stealing. Maybe those belong to some other girl who never broke your gravy boat, who never etched her initials in your brand new jar of peanut butter. But really, I'm just trying them on, just to see if they're my size.

TERROR!

I just applied for my first student loan. Over the internet. I only need 800 dollars, but they won't let you borrow less than a grand. Can I just take their thousand dollars and immediately pay them 200 of it back?

Guess What?

My dad used to be an entirely passions based man. When he was mad, things developed holes, broke into pieces, cowered before him. When he was happy, his cheekbones and nostrils lit up with laughter and tears would stream down his cheeks. Dad gets angry at things you'd never expect, but he loves all jokes. Little kid jokes, joke book jokes, sawmill mechanical shed jokes, all jokes. My father's favorite joke isn't even really a joke:

Dad: Hey Sonya! Guess What?

Sonya: What?

Dad: You Guessed It! Ah ha ha ha ha!

It's so simple that he can get anyone to fall for it, no matter how old. He loves playing it on the 5 and 6 year old grandchildren more than anyone, because they'll ask 'What?' over and over again, waiting for an announcement that will never come.
And after they tire of 'Guess What?' there's always "Gimmie Five" in which my father puts his hand out and says "Gimmie Five" and he's either going to whisk his hand away and then say "COME ON! Gimme Five already!" or clamp his giant paw around your tiny one and not let go until you're crying. Or possibly punching hard enough with your free hand to hurt. This has only worked in the last few years, as early attempts at the punching method just ended up with both my hands clamped together at the wrist.

(I always forget, in these stories, that sometimes the man comes off sounding kind of abusive. That's not my intent at all. I was terrified of my father as a kid because he was big and strong and occasionally angry for reasons no one understood. I love my father for every time he teased me, because he really taught me what I can and cannot do with what strength I have. It was through trial and error that I discovered what little use my arms were, how squirming can be useful. If I can get my knees up, I'm in business. If I can screw with your footing, I've got a decent re-settling window in which to move. )

But that's not the point. In recent years, my dad's ability to soothe the heart has become very apparent.
When I was younger, my dad would somehow end up holding all the crying babies in church. There's this really deep noise he makes in his chest, as he says "hey there now. hey now. It's not so bad. I know it's the pits sometimes, but it's not so bad. hey now. hey there now." and he holds their little bundled bodies against his shoulder and gently taps their backs with his fingertips until they fall asleep. It's a fairly consistent rotation of exhausted mothers handing their babies to Mr. W to be put to sleep.
My sisters' oldest children are in their early teens right now, and it's nothing if not explosive. After a confrontation with his step-father, my oldest nephew refused to come home. My dad called him at a friends house from Alaska. Then he called my brother-in-law. I know that he probably made some very logical, heart softening point to both parties. My nephew came home, things are functioning at close to normal again. I can't help thinking, though, that my father called up and said in his deep, baby putting to sleep voice, 'hey now. it's not so bad. I know it's the pits sometimes. It's okay. Hey now."

a thank-you we say to those one and all who...

Because he works for a government funded institution, Cake didn't have to work today. So when my alarm went off at 7am, he was still there.

Now, I'm not saying it's not nice to have the guy around. It's....pretty nice, but he likes to make a lot of big, loud, noise in the morning. I usually wait it out from 5am to 5:45am, and then go back to sleep until 7:30 or so and then wake up peacefully on my own. This morning, however...here. We'll have a reinactment. Just like the Civil War guys!

THE TIME: November Eleventh, 2003. 7:04am.

THE PLACE: A capitol hill apartment

THE SCENE: Sonya and Cake are sleeping soundly. An alarm rings.

Cake: "You're Welcome"

Sonya: "mmmrghn. Whahuh?"

Cake (stands, jumps on the bed.): "You-ou're Well-co-ome!!"

Sonya(tries to sit up, can't compete with the bouncing of the springs): "Thanks! ....for what?" (cake raises an eyebrow at sonya, continues to jump on bed, this is obviously a follow-up to another conversation) Oh Yeah! For my liberty?"

Cake: "And?"

Sonya: "Um, my freedom?"

Cake: "That's right. It's on me today, baby."

Sonya: "Please stop jumping."

Cake: "No! I served to give freedom to YOU and All Beautiful Women! And I like jumping on the bed!"

then he totally jumped on my ear, but it was an accident.

So Thanks, all you guys and ladies who didn't know what to do with yourselves when you got out of high school, that was a damn ballsy move, and I appreciate it. This one's for you.

Happy Veterans Day.

It's nice to be liked

Sometimes, if you make exactly one fourth of a wrong decision, it's twice as good as if you hadn't made any wrong decision at all. Sometimes one fourth is just enough of a bite to say "This cheese sandwich is not the cheese sandwich for me."

I wore the living crap out of my new dress. First to The Weirdest Spin The Bottle Ever (tm). Where Josh got 'Put Your Devil Horn Fingers In The Air' drunk off of, like, 2 drinks. (this is a weird fucking thing, people. Josh can finish off an entire bottle of whiskey and still chase your ass through a pitch-black field like a puma. Puma!) Krebs burst out laughing all by himself. Loud. Several times. And the acts were....some weird, some good, some good and weird, but overall, the evening provided an eerie vibe.

So my dress and I went out for a drink with a canadian, ate a quarter of a cheese sandwich, and reported to bed in the wee hours of the morning. Patrickt saved me by fetching my record player with me at the ungodly hour of 11 am. We celebrated with black beans and rice and talk of unrequited ass grabbing. I swathed the dress in napkins to protect it from the pork-stravaganza that was our lunch.
We visited the library.
The fiction librarian made eyes at Patrickt,
but I think he failed to notice.

All the pretty girls go to the city

I bought a new party dress.

It could have been somebody's cotillion dress in 1958. It's sleeveless, high waisted, puffy on bottom with a ribbon on top, lavender blue translucent flowers over blue pink satin flowers over purple crynolin on bottom. The store was going out of business so instead of the totally prohibitive price of 85 dollars, it was the friendly and allowing price of 35 dollars. I bought other things for cheapy that are great, but this dress is like...

this dress came up to me on the corner, told me a pirate joke, accidently snorted when it laughed and offered me dry fruit loops from a paper lunch bag. In other words, this dress is my new best friend and I'm not going anywhere or helping with anything unless you let me wear it.

Really. There's an 80 percent chance I'll wear that baby all weekend. (spin the bottle tonight, picking up my turntable with patrickt tomorrow morning, drinks with canadians, fabric store, Barbecue in K-land, Erins marimba performance, studying at the library...everywhere.)

Like cocaine, but with pictures.

Man, I've said it before, I'll say it again. Now.

Teaching Baby Paranoia is consistently a great read, and I spend the first half of each week anticipating the next comic.

Fifteen

It's bright and leafy and deathly cold today.

Days like this bring up a certain sort of sentimentality that takes a minute to put my finger on. Days like this make me think of...

being fifteen years old and having my day-driving permit. I drove a blue toyota pickup, the clutch of which was so far away that I had to shift by scooting way, way down in the seat and looking through the steering wheel while I maneuvered. I had a pink plastic box of home made tapes, that I could probably name off if I thought about it.

(Alice in Chains, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Nine Inch Nails, Counting Crows, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Bjork, Queen)

My mom was really nervous about the whole 'scooting way down to shift' situation, so I wasn't supposed to drive anyone else anywhere. So every day at 11:30, we'd cram five or six people into the cab of that little truck and go to the Arby's Drive Thru, because you could get 5 roast beef and cheddar sandwiches for 5 bucks. It was always Mandi's job to look out for my mom and Jared's job to watch out for my sisters. The emergency plan was...I don't know, actually. Maybe it was more about being ready to be in trouble than avoiding getting in trouble.

Moe would ride bitch on the days she'd decided to attend at all. She had the meanest reputation of anyone I've ever known and an on-and-off meth habit. My parents absolutely adored her.

Jared smoked Camel lights he'd stolen from his mom. We never dated, but his was the first penis I'd ever seen in real life, not counting infants. Someone dared him to take it out in the mall, and he did. I kissed him when he was drunk on peppermint schnapps once, so it was also through him that I first got an idea of what alchohol might taste like.

Eliza embarrassed easily. I don't know why she continued to be friends with Moe and I, because her face was always beet red for the entire time we were together. She started having sex that year. When she had slipped up, she was too embarressed to go into the store and buy a pregnancy test, so I bought it for her...(having seen only one penis up to that point, the irony of the situation was far from lost on me.)

I wore bellbottom sailors pants and carried a lighter in a little woven weed bag around my neck, but didn't smoke. I wore navy blue pumas all winter and borrowed heavy flannel shirts from my dad instead of wearing a coat. I kept my hair in low pigtails at all times.

My sister got re-married that year, I was her only bridesmaid, so we both bought nice sunday dresses instead of formals. Mine was lacey and and awkward fit, as everything tends to be when you're fifteen, but I wore it to Aaron's junior prom when he and Eldon asked Angie and I to double date. Aaron was a drag racer and Eldon was a pot dealer. The three of them got high over the falls and tapped out the pipe on a stump with a hundred other tap-out marks on it. I was very, very uncomfortable, and had to be home by ten. I now realize that I had nothing to worry about, as no one else there knew me, and the three people I did know were high as fuck.

thats what this kind of day reminds me of. I wouldn't do it again, but I'm glad it all happened the first time.

Sleeps in the park shaves in the dark

Wanna know what's really crazy? In a single 24 hour period, I can go from

bright, slim, charming and delicious
to
bloody, infectious, obese and foul.

Crazy, huh?

And now, for the once-beloved, nearly forgotten this imploding heart Feature:

A List of Things I Hate:

1:The sink being full of bowls and spoons. Only bowls and spoons.

2:Rolodexes full of information that is never, ever accurate

3:Hummers, and the people who buy them and go grocery shopping in them.

4:Cars never fucking stopping for pedestrians ever.

5:bloody infectious obeseity

6:people who touch bellybuttons when others are trying to stretch, thus making it unsafe to stretch, ever.

7:electric heat

8: the books at the library being every dewey decimal up to and after the dewey decimal I need, but no Dictionary of Asian Americans or Encyclopedia of American Social History in sight.

9: snooze buttons (I'm highly suspect that all snooze buttons are out to get me)

10: shaving and being not-fat in winter.( I just want to grow myself a coat of fat and hair! What's the problem with that?!?)

Cake just called me and said "Sonya! Guess what? Turkeys are on sale 2 for 1 at Safeway! How much room do you have in your freezer?"

the end.

with the change in temperature

the other day I noticed that the coat you're wearing these days is a lot like the one I bought for you all those years ago while I was in small towns with mimes. The one that was way too big.
I mentioned it without thinking twice. I liked both coats so much.

It seemed to make you uncomfortable, my bringing up the past like that, and I wondered what you think of when you see me these days.

When I see you, it's hard to remember that I spent so many nights breathing in time with you, that I ever buried my face against your chest and sobbed like a child in front of the museum, that you used to scoop me up like a bundle of laundry when I was sick. When I see you, you're barely familiar at all, like a cousin I've only met once or twice.
I don't know whether it's the effects of my faulty memory, or if it's just how time passes, but I hope that our past can be like a childrens book we both read.
Sweet, terrifying, and distant.