Still Here
(Excerpt from One Million Dripping Mad Men Wouldn’t Lie About Me)
Kona Morris
I'M STILL HERE, I whisper to myself on occasion. When I’m submerged inside the crowd, uncertain of yellow, feet feeling empty, sidewalk stages epilating tangerines and aloof bouts of nausea. I feel less alone, hearing my own voice, like the multitude of my mind inside canvas walls.
And it works, sometimes.
I was an orphan when I woke up. A seventy-two year old orphan. I look at sheet metal and sigh. I look at Africa and sigh. I look to the hairs poking through toe knuckle pores and sing.
Occasionally.
And yet I am twenty-four and full of bones.
I come home and hear myself speak to the John Cusack charcoal on the wall. Hope you had a happy day. His dark eyes twinkling, best friend I ever had. And smiled at least fourteen separate, unrelated times. I had a dream we talked on the phone last night. Then I woke up with hard plastic stuck between my chin and the sheet. Only it was the antique toy that I found at the flea market and you were still in your frame.
Have you ever wanted to describe a feeling so much that you were tempted to just pull it out and slap it onto the page? Perhaps the colour of the slimy organ, raw and exposed to oxygen, will inspire you.
I'm not asking because you are not someone.
KONA MORRIS'S short stories and prose poems have appeared in a variety of publications. She received the Redwood Empire Mensa Award for Creative Non-Fiction in 2006. She is co-founder and editor of Fast Forward Press (www.fastforwardpress.org), as well as the new anthology series, Anthology of the Awkward. She is currently working on a novel and collaborating on a book on writing with the author Bobbie Louise Hawkins. She is a writing professor in Denver. www.konamorris.com
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Last Day
Kona Morris :: Still Here