My Head Is In The Clouds: An Explanation

Once upon a time; once I was twenty-seven. The birds began speaking to me in their squeaky voices and I learned from them the secrets of the universe. The sun turned into a tangerine and seeds fell from her body like tears because yes, even the sun cries. Hot girls cry too.

Somewhere in the sky, there is a keyhole, and I am the key. I am the one who will unlock a great cosmic mystery; I have known this in my soulhood since the moment I first saw the sky.

There are gaps in the clouds, their shapes forming an array of apertures, and one of them is mine—I have to find it. But the earth is always turning, always shifting, always throwing me off course. 

How will I find where I belong? I have tried many times, sticking my face up into the sky, turning my neck this way and that. Never the right fit.

The boy and I were driving in search of snacks and I was explaining to him the scientific basis of the birth chart. I said, the planets and stars are always moving and, at the moment you are born, they arrange themselves into a unique pattern. 

He said, the planets and stars aren’t shifting around—it is the earth that is turning, and changing our relation to them. 

I fell silent. I much preferred the image of all the planets and stars flitting in and out of their choreography. I much prefer a little cosmic dance. 

How To Control Everything: A Woman's Guide

I keep my joy in a tiny cardboard jewelry box on my dresser, where I know I can always find it. I have squished it down to make it fit. With time, it has taken on the shape of its container, its once-malleable golden consistency now settled into a stocky, tarnished block. I do not care what my joy looks like, so long as it fits in the palm of my hand. Big emotions are a threat to my carefully curated environment, where there is a place for everything, and everything is in its place.

I keep my tears condensed in a can, teasing them with the prospect of release as they sit on the shelves of my eyelids, quivering with excitement. They do not know that this is where they are destined to remain. The race will never begin; they will not get the chance to run wildly down the tracks of my cheeks. I am too calculated, too careful with my appearance to allow lawless drops of water to paint my face in whatever abstract patterns they please. This is my face, not theirs. I call the shots.

Anticipation is a distant memory, the sound of my mother’s navy blue felt-tip pen etching her elegant, swoopy signature onto my field trip permission slip, signaling the promise of adventures sure to come. The slick leather of the cracked bus seat warming under my little hands; the juiciness squeezed into an afternoon at the children’s museum, running until my shoelaces untied themselves, and blowing bubbles through a gigantic plastic wand. 

Of course, once I got older, I learned that there is a direct correlation between things that are ripe and things that are messy. And so I freeze-dried my anticipation into paper-thin orange slices and strung them together to make a garland for my room. I sit on my bed during these sticky summer afternoons and watch the ceiling fan spin, circulating the air and making my flat pieces of fruit perform their careful little dance, wafting mechanically up and down, up and down. 

My house is a sanctuary for predictability; my windows are lined with shiny plastic plants, so that I do not have to worry about anything dying here. All of my identical tank tops hang in a row in my closet, like soldiers in uniform, ready and waiting to accompany a pair of vintage Levi’s into battle. The war between stains and fabric rages on, clumsiness often emerging victorious over perfection, with coffee or blood emblazoned across the front of a white blouse. I swap my shirt out for its duplicate, whichever is next in line, and I imagine that I am God, moving the pieces of the earth around to accommodate my vision.

I can handle this tiny corner of creation.

I know my limits, and I know the exact number of identical shirts it takes to appear stainless.