It's 3:54am and I'm Still cleaning my place
I have been on a strange sleeping pattern. Haven't been able to sleep until around 5 in the morning since I got back here.
My apartment is a mess. I had to scavenge through dumpsters to rally up a mere few cardboard boxes for my upcoming move. The worst part of moving/cleaning living quarters (especially having left it abandoned for months on end) is having to work through the congregation of insects that have armied together since you last set foot in your own home. There are pill bugs crawling across the carpet. There are even dead, dried up husks of pill bugs curled up on my carpet. Hell, I somehow managed to even smash a few of these shells into the carpet throughout the week, and now they're a pain to even suck up into the vacuum cleaner.
The spiders have taken over all the corners of my house -- in my room, the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room. And Indiana spiders lay damn thick webs too. I try to wave my hand in the bottom corner of my room, where a spider had been collecting littler bugs above my laundry basket; I wave my hand there to destroy the web like picking up a cotton candy from the machine. But instead of breaking easily, my fingers just seem to pluck the threads like taut harp strings. I imagine these spiders, despite even the smallest of sizes, probably pack a strong irritating bite.
I also forgot, since last year, that the summers out here also assures that you will be walking and without expecting it, you would already walked into a spider web. It gauzes over your face like a warm film, and I can't help but imagine a spider hiding somewhere on my person, only to bite me later. Or lay eggs in my nose. I once got bitten by a spider three times on my face, during my sleep, when I was six or seven years old. The doctor made me rub meat tenderizer on the raised bumps "to bring down the swelling."
I got bitten by a mosquito almost immediately when i got back. I was outside trying to see if my car would start, and the bitch nailed me on the right bicep. I'm allergic to mosquito bites, and this one swell up into a nice golfball.
***
I miss David. A lot. The thing about long distance relationships -- compared to say, dealing with dead lovers (and here I'm going to be super pretentious) -- is that you don't have the same kind of void. You know that the person is there, out somewhere, without you. Having broken up with someone, or having them walk-out/die on you gives a definative sharp hole. You don't have to ponder what they are doing without you, what they're eating for dinner, or what song they're listening to on their headphones.
Long distance doesn't offer this sort of clarity. Instead you are given a muddy question mark of what could be. I wanted David to move on out here with me (even though I know that's not possible right now), and what I am left with is the frosted idea of what could be. His presense floats only in my imagination: there he is sitting at my kitchen table, there he is lying on the couch reading a internet printouts of celebrity gossip. It is the hypotheticals that feel sharper than pure, complete lack.
My apartment is a mess. I had to scavenge through dumpsters to rally up a mere few cardboard boxes for my upcoming move. The worst part of moving/cleaning living quarters (especially having left it abandoned for months on end) is having to work through the congregation of insects that have armied together since you last set foot in your own home. There are pill bugs crawling across the carpet. There are even dead, dried up husks of pill bugs curled up on my carpet. Hell, I somehow managed to even smash a few of these shells into the carpet throughout the week, and now they're a pain to even suck up into the vacuum cleaner.
The spiders have taken over all the corners of my house -- in my room, the bathroom, the kitchen, the living room. And Indiana spiders lay damn thick webs too. I try to wave my hand in the bottom corner of my room, where a spider had been collecting littler bugs above my laundry basket; I wave my hand there to destroy the web like picking up a cotton candy from the machine. But instead of breaking easily, my fingers just seem to pluck the threads like taut harp strings. I imagine these spiders, despite even the smallest of sizes, probably pack a strong irritating bite.
I also forgot, since last year, that the summers out here also assures that you will be walking and without expecting it, you would already walked into a spider web. It gauzes over your face like a warm film, and I can't help but imagine a spider hiding somewhere on my person, only to bite me later. Or lay eggs in my nose. I once got bitten by a spider three times on my face, during my sleep, when I was six or seven years old. The doctor made me rub meat tenderizer on the raised bumps "to bring down the swelling."
I got bitten by a mosquito almost immediately when i got back. I was outside trying to see if my car would start, and the bitch nailed me on the right bicep. I'm allergic to mosquito bites, and this one swell up into a nice golfball.
***
I miss David. A lot. The thing about long distance relationships -- compared to say, dealing with dead lovers (and here I'm going to be super pretentious) -- is that you don't have the same kind of void. You know that the person is there, out somewhere, without you. Having broken up with someone, or having them walk-out/die on you gives a definative sharp hole. You don't have to ponder what they are doing without you, what they're eating for dinner, or what song they're listening to on their headphones.
Long distance doesn't offer this sort of clarity. Instead you are given a muddy question mark of what could be. I wanted David to move on out here with me (even though I know that's not possible right now), and what I am left with is the frosted idea of what could be. His presense floats only in my imagination: there he is sitting at my kitchen table, there he is lying on the couch reading a internet printouts of celebrity gossip. It is the hypotheticals that feel sharper than pure, complete lack.
posted by Danny Thanh Nguyen at 3:50 AM
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