how i failed to save the world
I have begun to look like them. I walk like them, my voice sounds like them, my hair even. I smell like them and at night I watch them on my phone and I wonder if it’s all true and this is the way they are.
I did it like you wanted me to, can I stop now?
And you may have said yes a long time ago, but I didn’t hear that part. I was too busy looking at my phone or reading or buying a subscription to watch the show you’re talking about. I draw the line at the book trilogies and the music, the music is just terrible and the books really do me in. Sometimes we talk and I have to manually check how my face looks but I feel like they know that I have to manually check and that’s why we don’t speak anymore and everybody has moved to the row in front of me.
It makes me sick to be around you if I am completely honest. It makes me sick and in any other world or situation I’d be happy to see you doing poorly. In this one, though, I give you a hug when you cry and I mean it and I don’t know what that means about us.
I hate you. And I mean it, and I don’t know what that means either.
I think it’s something about my smile that they see through. It might be my clothes or the way my water bottle may or may not have mold in it. I think they could tell no matter how many times I wash it.
I have been told many times I’m an opinionated person and that I probably argue too much. I don’t agree at all, but that just proves everyone’s point. I think there’s a part of me that hates to agree with many people, but I genuinely do think everybody is wrong about almost everything pretty often and maybe that’s what they don’t enjoy to be around? I don’t care and I don’t enjoy them either but it still makes me feel weird when they all look at me when they leave the room.
I don’t know how to help people.
Am I evil to you?
Is it because of God? Is it because of that part?
Am I too girlish? Or boyish?
When I squint does it bother you? Well, don’t make me squint, I think I would bother you less then.
I helped my good friend with taking care of her son while we were visiting Arkansas this past summer. I had him sitting outside with me on a porch chair, facing me, the night we stayed in the Airbnb. We had finished looking at the fireflies.
There’s something that almost makes complete sense when I look at a baby in my lap. He balances atop my knees, his little legs laying in front of him across mine, his feet touching my abdomen. I sit in the lawn chair and hold him up by his sides, grabbing him under both his armpits, while we stare at each other.
Everybody loves you. Your mom would do anything for you, most people would do anything for you, in case you didn't know.
He’s a baby so he says nothing.
You’ll be taller than your mom and I one day, a lot taller. You’ll tower over every body in the room and need extra leg space. You’ll help people reach the top shelves and have horrible, horrible growing pains. Maybe you’ll play basketball, if that’s your thing. You’ll be a man. Could you be a nice one?
He’s a baby so he says nothing.
The breeze is nice and the sun is setting.
You won’t remember me saying this, but I think I have been you before. Small, two feet tall. I needed to be carried and taught how to live and taught how to stop trying to kill myself. Somebody needed to make a bed for me, and did. But I can’t remember what it’s like. Do you think you could remind me? Maybe when you get to talking you can remind me. Nobody remembers, but everybody has been you, but there’s no way you will end up exactly like any of us. Isn’t that so strange? Try to remember when you start to speak, yeah?
He coughs and I take that as an answer.
I work to pick myself up off the lawn chair while holding him with both hands, sighing at the effort and placing him on my right hip before walking back inside.
I’ve been thinking about ways to save the world, I confide in him. And I think I’m going about it all wrong. I’m going to tell your mom to come with us to go look at the fireflies. Maybe when we’re all standing by the tree, you can start to jog our memory. Maybe that’s where we can start.