The Reason Escapes Me

Pickle. Water. Write it down. Splash some in your eyes and make them sting. It stings! It's stinging! Hallaluya! I can feel the spices burrowing into my vision, blurring and burning. The hairs on my ears tickle, and I pinch them in twos and threes and furs and rip them out completely—making the sound of dirt crumbling and roots ripping right out of the ground. Looking down to inspect them between my fingertips, the burning tear drops washes them away.

Such liquid words flower forever, covering the hillsides of the valley below—where the shopping centers are abandoned, and all the streets are empty. I've only imagined places such as this existing, abandoned, and forgotten, then discovered by chance with the lucky winner being me. Inside these places, it's easy to feel scared when where you are now looks like a place where someone else has been. It's spooky, even though they have all gone, and spookier because they are still. Gone because they had a reason to leave—leaving the reason behind, abandoned, hoping never to see it again. It's this very reason that resonates throughout the valley—silent whispers carried in the wind, racing up the mountains then sliding back down again. I can feel it on my face, and taste it with my tongue. It tastes like something happened when I feel it in my lungs. I suck it in deeper, and fill my stomach with reserve. My eyes pop open when I feel the power... Full surge! Full surge! It feels like my lungs have to pee... no... it's more like diarrhea... no... maybe I meant more like puking cause it's coming out of my mouth... and nose... here it goes...

The reason escapes me—Whoooooooosh!—blowing down the walls. I'm still blowing—the walls are still falling—one on top of the other, in vertical stacks sandwiched together. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap-Clop. Backing up the hillside, they slide up and over the one underneath—the top one sliding higher, stretching out the middle side by side together, paving a path out of walls all the way to the highest peak.

I sit down on the last one that is now the first, with my back to the mountain, I breathe in and in some more, filling my lungs up and even more than before. My eyes burst open again until they can't take it anymore, and my stomach muscles squeeze this time much harder making the wind sound more like a roar. I slide up the mountain, all the way to the top. The walls feel like glass on my bottom, as if they weren't there at all. I look down and the mountain is below me—tiny and crawling with ants. From way up here, I see the big picture that I live in, and notice that the reason that escaped me was blowing too hard.