As Loud As Possible

Laughing at all of these assholes who parked illegally in front of the Taliban bakery and left their convertible tops down in the pouring rain.

thats-just-m3 asked: please follow back

No.

My aunt troll is visiting and she will not stop talking about things I will never find interesting. And when she isn’t talking about the yearbook committee she is sitting here making weird grunts. I’m uncomfortable.

We’re literally playing baseball with a mannequin leg at work…

Seeds

“Ingredients: Pumpkin seeds.”  I was reading the back of the bag while Alice spoke.  She was going on about one thing or another, but I hadn’t heard a word of it.  She could have been telling me that my sister had been hit by a car and it wouldn’t have made any difference.  “Not a low calorie food.”  I recognized a rising inflection and glanced up at her to grunt in agreement to whatever question she had posed.  This satisfied her and she continued, “So I told him that if we couldn’t plant in the backyard then his dog couldn’t shit in the backyard.”  I started over on the pumpkin seeds. “Processed in a plant that may have handled milk or soy products.”  We were having problems with our downstairs neighbor.  Alice had laid out a small plot in the yard and planted a few vegetables, but the neighbor, I forget his name, had let his dog tear it up.  I wanted to move.  I had wanted to move months ago when he started to boil cabbage every day.  The stench would seep through the floorboards and crawl into my nostrils, settling in like a cat who curled up under the porch to die.  I wanted to move, but Alice was stubborn.  It was a trait I had once admired, but now found annoying.  

When I finished reading the back of the bag for a second time, I looked up at her.  She was still beautiful, that much had not changed in the last five years.  Her dark hair tumbled over her shoulders as she moved about the kitchen.  Her body swayed gracefully, each part working in perfect synchronization, a well oiled machine.  She turned to look at me, leaning against the counter.  “I forgot to tell you,” she bit down on a celery stalk, “your sister called this morning.”  I raised my eyebrows and waited for her to finish.  “She said you didn’t send back our rsvp?”  She crunched on the celery for a minute and swallowed.  “It’s pretty obvious I’ll be there,” I moaned, “it’s my sisters wedding.”  Alice pursed her lips and shrugged.  She did this whenever she thought I was being an asshole.  “She still needs to know our dinner preference.”  She turned her back on me again and started rummaging through the cabinets.  I hadn’t rsvp’ed because I couldn’t bring myself to check off “our” meal preferences on “our” invitation. I wasn’t ready to commit to my plus one.  

I tried to remember where I had put the invitation, but found myself thinking instead of a family trip to Canada when I was nine.  In the Basilique Notre-Dame, my mother cried.  She said she had never felt more love in her life, but I didn’t feel anything.  While she lit candles and prayed, the guide showed my sister and I to a smaller chapel in the back.  When he pulled open the heavy door our faces were lit up as if he had opened up a bank vault full of gold coins.  Everything in the chapel was warm and soft and full of light.  It was in there that I understood why my mother was crying.  My sister stood on the altar and announced to the empty room that she would be married there.  She was getting married at the end of August, but not in the Basilique Notre-Dame.  Alice was still talking, and I stared at her face, trying to find anything in it that could come close to that light.  There might have been once, when we had first fallen in love, but it was gone now.  I could see nothing in her that could touch it.   I turned the bag of seeds around to study the front.  “Pumpkin Seeds”.  I read the words over and over until they lost meaning.  

In bed that night I lay awake, still trying to bring the chapel back to me.  Alice was snoring lightly, something I had thought was endearing in the beginning, but now kept me up.  I gave her a little shake and she draped her arm across my stomach, mumbling that she loved me.  Pumpkin seeds. My own arm was outstretched into the darkness, and I was trying to close my fingers around a small ball of light that was just beyond reach.  Like a child lays in bed thinking they can touch the ceiling, I strained every muscle, certain that it was only an inch away.