Tangerine-Colored Quarantine

This piece was featured in M/U's spirituality-themed anthology, Spiritus Oppidum. If you wish to check out the entire collection, copies are available at the Peterborough Town Library, the Toadstool Bookshop (Peterborough), and directly from Monadnock Underground here.

I caught myself dreaming last night. 

Sleeping till 11am, toes tangled in tangerine-colored cotton.

Creature of habit.

I woke up with violets under my tongue, the smell of early summer, late spring, stretching its legs. Spreading itself onto the rest of the world- like a good jam on sourdough.

I woke up with the need to be big and important, productive and real. I woke up with a strong desire to be on solid ground- to escape the stormy sea of 2020.

I wish my years were still in the bratty teenage phase, but we’ve reached the floundering early twenties. 

I swallowed the violets and stood in the eggshell bathroom brushing my teeth with the same peppermint-scented toothpaste I've used for the past couple months and-hey! Does toothpaste really do anything? I remember hearing someone say it’s just like sucking on a mint- where did I hear that? Is it true?

Contemplating toothpaste at 11am. The floundering twenties are boring a hole in my skull and evidence can be found in my mundane internal monologue. 

I could have gone my entire life without knowing how fast my mental state would deteriorate under self-imposed quarantine- like the US economy, not as strong as it boasted itself to be. 

I caught myself dreaming of last summer and my horrible behavior, the unripe stone fruit and the cherry pits in newborn river grass.

The moon roof in the green station wagon and the moon itself, the anger that accompanied sobriety and the sky: bigger, wider, and more ominous than I’d ever seen it before. I don’t think it rained once last July but I don’t think I noticed.  

I caught myself dreaming with collapsed stitches in my left cheek, saliva and sweat staining my lips. My legs covered in bug bites and bruises, because I have the blood they come running for. 

I caught myself dreaming of the room I used to share with my sisters, the operatic music, the blueberry pancakes and raw milk with the cream still on top. 

The farmhouse, big and blue- unable to contain the energy three witchy sisters provide. 

I caught myself dreaming, reminiscing, swimming in nostalgia. 

It’s a gift but a curse when you turn it sideways and I can still feel the strawberry-flavored ice pop I ate when I was twelve hit my front teeth when I smell daylilies in deep spacey summer. 

There’s not much to do but replay your favorite memories in the floundering twenties.

I only feed my favorite parts, I only watch my favorites. It’s a sweet and soft sentiment but ultimately detrimental- like the fourth or fifth piece of homemade focaccia.

I heard the toothpaste thing in a movie, give me a couple hours and I’ll remember which one.

I would give anything to trade tangerine-colored cotton for the bottom of the ocean floor, to be packed in wet sand surrounded by buzzy human bodies. I miss the human noise, I miss observing the human condition. 

I would give anything to trade my nostalgia for current experience because I swear to god if I spend one more second thinking about toothpaste I’m going to completely lose it.

I would give anything to relive my memories, but personhood is fleeting and I am not the same person I was last summer, last July, many summers ago in the big blue farm house. 

I’ve learned a lot in the floundering early twenties and it’s not even close to over.

I’ve learned to watch the trees sway in the wind without getting bored, to lay in the strips of sun that shine through my bedroom window without getting twitchy. 

Mindfulness, meditation, manifestation, all these mmm-words I’ve brushed off as useless and intangible have become my saving grace. 

I’ve been learning to self-define. Spending sixteen hours tangled in tangerine cotton tends to blur my lines, but my blue-painted toes remind me I am not a duvet cover, I am more than the sum of my parts, more than the space I inhabit. 

I am constantly contradicting myself, embodying hypocrisy but a little self-forgiveness goes a long way. In the floundering stage forgiveness is stretched like taffy.

Swimming in nostalgia but not drowning in it, the intangible mmm-words gave me the ability to survive my nearly photographic memory, survive the stormy sea of 2020. 

I caught myself dreaming but waking up didn’t feel like culture shock, the violets under my tongue didn’t trigger a gag. 

Does toothpaste really do anything? 

I caught myself dreaming, I usually do.

Creature of habit in the eggshell bathroom.