magzdoodle's blog

When was the last time someone did something nice for you? Not because they felt like they needed to or someone told them that they had to. But because they wanted to. Simply. Randomly. Surprisingly. When was the last time someone held the door for you, and then asked you how your day was going because they truly meant it and actually wanted to know the answer? When was the last time?

21412.

A number that may not seem like much, but always makes me think of you. The way it is the same, frontwards, backwards. 21412.

Days like this always make me think of you, but I don’t know if you know that. I wonder if you think of me, too. Think. Do you think of me, too?

21412.

It’s funny how the train sounds the same no matter what state I’m in. Distant yet determined to remind me of where it’s going. Going. Always going somewhere. Choo-choo, choo-choo, choo-choo. The train, it whistles and yells, and hey, at least it’s going somewhere.

It’s funny how the pain never changes, never goes away. Funny how it keeps chugging along at a determined, full-throttle run, making a break for it. Making a jump.

I’m walking down the hallway when I think about footsteps. When I think about shadows. When I think about silhouettes projected on the empty walls, projected up there like we own them. We are puppeteers and the shadows are our friends, dancing in time with our jagged jerks and pulls. Yanking their strings to tell the world, Stop, look at me. I’m fine.

You were always so worried about parking in the disaster of my driveway, always so worried that once your hand slipped off of the parking brake, you would still end up sliding down that steep hill of pavement. But you let your car sit there anyway as we walk around to the back of my house to break into the screen door on my deck. No one is home, or at least no one is answering the doorbell, and no one remembers that when the back door is left unlocked, someone else in the house left it like that for a reason.

Mr. P made the darkroom in the back of his classroom all by himself. Although the closet was once full of random art supplies, old projects left behind from former students, and other miscellaneous storage items that no one was determined enough to find a true home for, Mr. P managed to turn it into something beautiful. All the way down to the painted-black walls and the soft red overhead light that was more like the faint glow of an Exit sign, he turned that closet into something really beautiful. Enticing, even.

I can’t walk slowly enough on nights like tonight. My backpack can’t weigh enough and the wind can’t bite me hard enough, can’t make me zip up my jacket and tighten the straps to my bag. Nights like tonight make me look at the hazy orange sky and remember where mountains used to stand, embracing the sky like natural skyscrapers.