Have you ever felt your brain...
m e l t i n g ?
I try to close my eyes
and tell myself
go to sleep
go to sleep
go to sleep,
but as soon as I do it,
[when you close
your eyes too hard]
I s t a r t s e e i n g a b u n c h
o f l i t t l e s p e c k s a n d s t a r s .
It's exactly like that, but worse
(o better I couldn't tell)
It's like watching
inside my brain
a bunch of plastic
melting and bubbling.
It's glitter,
tons and tons,
and tons of glitter.
It feels like white noise,
eating up my brain.
It's chewing
a mouth full of sand.
It's chewing
broken glass.
My mind is a m e s s ,
my throat s h u t s d o w n ,
my stomach is a k n o t ,
my feet get c o l d .
I s h r i n k into
the c o c o o n of sheets,
in the c h a o s that is my bed.
I rock m y s e l f
back and f o r w a r d ,
.................................. h o p i n g
that the r o l l e r c o a s t e r
of my m a n i a
can take me f a r a w a y .
My mind i n e v i t a b l y
.....................w a n d e r s
to these
frozen m o m e n t s
of t r a n q u i l i t y
in my c h i l d h o o d .
[They say:
"You're not supposed
to remember anything
before the year 5"]
I was 3 years old,
walking with my grandma
and she bought me
this meringue sweet,
big, round,
and brightly colored,
baby blue or pink
with rainbow sparkles.
{{made from a mixture
of well-beaten egg whites
and sugar, baked until crisp}}
which in my country
is called Suspiro
(Sigh in English).
The smell of cheap
baby cologne
in the mornings,
used after showers.
The feeling of freshness
when my grandma
covered my neck
in talcum powder.
The 1997's plastic lunch boxes,
[pastelitos de queso
y kool aid]
the way I always had to pick
the cleanest chair
at the kinder's lunch room
to have my breakfast in.
The pain in my knees,
after I tripped and rolled down
a newly asphalted street,
the quietness of that rainy day,
drops hitting the plantain leafs,
Lion King playing on the TV set.
The day I got angry
with my kinder garden teacher,
["I'm gonna go home"]
I ran to the entrance gates
trying to view in my head
the way home.
Imagining I was fishing
(the toys scattered
across the room were
supposed to be the fish)
sitting on the floor
inside my broken
upside down umbrella,
I was Alice in Wonderland.
Sitting in my house's stairs,
looking down to the kitchen,
watching my mother
leave to make errands,
but she wasn't taking me with her.
And that exact point,
3 or 4 years old,
a memory linked to a smell,
the smell of plastic...
plastic wraps
found in my Christmas presents.
[plastiquie]
The smell of a Chinese convenience store on holidays,
when they sell ornaments, glue, plastic spheres,
[silver, golden, green,
red, pink, purple]
plastic string wigs, shiny party curtains,
mountains of colored glitter everywhere.
[It was Bananas in Pyjamas,
and Little Lulu's VHS'
and Club Social crackers,
and bubble gum,
and Oreos,
and chewy candy
(and the bracelets
made with their wrappers)
and chocolate frogs, bears and toads,
and little chocolate footballs
wrapped in tin foil]