Sunlight-Colored Roses

That I won’t disappear in the water.
That I won’t always be swimming against the tide.”
–Darren Hayes, “Taken by the Sea”

I have met the same people over and over again.

When I was a child I had a parakeet that was precious to me. She died in an accident that was my fault. My feelings were so immense that there was almost no way that that would be the end of it. A few years later I got a male cockatiel, and when I spent time with him, I knew he was the same bird that she had been. It was her. And I know it just as well now as I did then.

I will try to find a picture of myself from years ago. So different from me now, with bobbed hair I dyed black in a shower I never cleaned, in a cold apartment that always dripped, where I kept the curtains always drawn.

I was brave. I have taken out my figurative jewelry box and added up the pennies and nickels in it to fill up my tank of gas. That was what I did once to leave somewhere, and I had the experience of having to go to the cashier with a lot of pennies and nickels, and I knew how it looked, and he asked me did I need “help.” And I told him coldly that I didn’t.

I would rather pay with my pennies and nickels. I’m trying to buy something in return for them. Maybe something everyone else already has. But I want to pay for it with my own money. That’s all I’m trying to say.