Her Universe House: A reflection

Posted by Minni

I climbed into the window of her universe house:
Thanksgiving came, like it does every year, and I ate too much, like I do every year. And even though it was three days, it seemed like a week, I hadn’t been home to Birmingham in at least four months, I felt like a visitor in my own house, I slept in my old room in the attic, and it seemed almost as if I was in the room of a stranger. A person I never knew, a person whose bed was on the floor, the room of a high school student. This person wore platform shoes and had an ugly red down coat with stains on it. She also seemed to like to like boy bands and her phone book contained only three phone numbers that were not those of her relatives. I never knew her, and if I had, I’m sure that I wouldn’t like her. I saw a picture of her and she was fat, with curly hair and was wearing poorly applied makeup: she probably did it herself. And I read her journals because I was bored, and a little intrigued: something about this stranger seemed aggravatingly, almost painfully familiar. In her journal she did write about herself, but there were other people. People that did not exist save for the space in her head. In her journal she was in Italy, bringing back a rise of a modern roman empire and engaged to the son of the man, Romaine Chestari, who sponsored the invention of nuclear fusion. And her best friend’s name was Janice. It dawned on me that it was all her imagination when i found out she did not,in fact, know anyone named Janice; I looked in her yearbook and her phone book. Nothing. The only thing that was real in that journal was her name…And I felt sorry for her but at the same time, almost envied her: she had really known these people. And then I felt like I could cry. I had lost them. That girl was me…, only time had come between us. The only thing that remained intact was the name…the only thing that was real. The rest was saftly shuttled back to the land of imagination.
It was two in the morning by the time I put down my old journal and turned out the light. I had a strange feeling, like I had stepped into a foggy fourth dimension though I was neither high nor drunk…and I went over to my laptop, Jack, and opened Windows media player. I clicked on the postal service “the district sleeps alone tonight”….and fell asleep on my bed on the floor. I put my arms around an old stuffed animal of mine, a life-size lioness. It was dry and dusty…it was Lemonseed, my old friend.