stream of consciesness...not sunny ~C.B.

What is it that changes the color with my moods? On the outside I seem quiet, kind, maybe a little bit jolly…used to be sunny but the years have turned sunny into jolly. My friend….one of the very few people that actually honestly knew me… said I used to be dark….Sylvia Plath dark…Wynona Ryder dark…maybe, at times, Helena Bonham Carter dark….that was who my class in college pegged me as…in the early 90s…Helena Bonham Carter In "Howard's End" but really any movie…I rushed home and looked it up…hmmmm what a strange person…but why? But, when I was 23, I became a mother….grocery shopping…ice cream…wet wipes on little chins and a mommy answer…even when I felt quiet…even when I was talking on the phone…or working…and yet it was love and is love…love and despair for ever and ever….worry and longing that never goes away…longing for their futures and worry for their nows….and their futures…and their pasts…the pasts that I have made…molded and shaped…the ideas…and hopefully the values…I don't know. So the person who I was changed...But, sometimes the person who I was haunts me….a forever poet with flat tummy, cigarette, and bright red lipstick…the same values and beliefs… but my life was art…just like Sylvia said…I wasn't interested in the now….it was the cosmic idea of ever…or the lack there of that held me….it was long midnight drives alone…just me and my 1963 pink Dodge….and a cassette player….and Concrete Blonde over and over and over…maybe a bottle of whiskey….or cheap wine and pushing my car half a block so my grandparents didn't hear….I am haunted….a haunted house that lives in my dreams…maybe my great-grandparents house…I don't know…but, now…I listen…I listen to the banter….the endless chatter…with no substance…and I nod and make eye contact….and feign concern…but they never say anything and they don't care…about anyone or anything really… just life's little trivialities….the tricks that keep them glued to the inane…sometimes a gleam of poetry…or truth…but the poets have all sold out….and the searchers….well I think we may have lost over half of them with an epic…award winning…movie-like… tragedy and then… a Mel Gibson classic….I don't know…and the most laughable thing is that half of me doesn't care either…because I have bills that I can't pay and school that I am scared to death of and gas prices that remind me of searching for heroin… the fumes of the real drug…that is draining our veins…and raping our wallets….and, I have babies….that I am trying to give chances that I never had…because…what kind of person would I be if I just let the circle happen again…would I raise my poor little brother…the beautiful boy that stared at the clouds and told me that he would always be my hero…and slept holding my hand…to keep me away from the reality that would become the darkened memories…fading in and out….never sure what is real and what is not…just the pain…the pain that led to glistening bits of sharpened steel and ruby like rivers for me and the pain that led to a sharp prick…a whoosh of blood…and the numbing fruit of the gods for my brother….but, he won the race…and who would have thought….he left…and took the memories that he forgot…in all of his stupor…to give back to me…no, I will not let that happen again… not with these two…and not if I can do anything in my power to stop it…it means the world…and the future…but, this haunting is there…and it is mine…I don't need to have belief in supernatural…because the supernatural comes with me…it is mine…probably a gift from old Abraham himself…a gift that he would never have known that he passed down…to the only granddaughter of his favorite daughter…a cheery Carrie…a small bubbling lovely Carrie…a Carrie that read romance novels to me before bed…and baked cookies for me when I was sick…and healthy…and smelled of lotion…and loved me…and loved me…and loved me…for ever and ever…no matter what….A Carrie much like myself… critical and perfectionist…with the same mannerisms and a face that was much alike…except for the beauty that was all hers, and something that she couldn't share…she was peppermint breath and soft hands and a beautiful voice singing "tiny bubbles" or "You are my sunshine…my only sunshine" but my sunshine went away…but held on…for me…as long as she possibly could…and that showed more love than ever ever…that anyone ever could…and I am left…haunted…with a tiny glaze over the world…making the color filtered low key