The Jolly Rancher

The horizon is frozen, orange cream melting in your mouth. Your fingertips are the time you touched a hot stove, but it’s not hot. All the sound you hear is muted by white that obscures the blades of grass you once felt between your toes. The thought of bare feet on the grass reminds you of an old itch inside your head and it shoots down your nerves to those same fingertips. The itch greets you like an old friend, beckoning you to shake their hand. Your feet were once your enemy and so were your hands. Every part of you has not been you, just like every person that isn’t you cannot be you.

All the white fades into the house you lived in when you were twelve. You imagine warm water running over your feet. There is soap for the dishes, but it works just as well for your skin. It smells like the first Jolly Rancher you ever tasted. That scent stays with you and it is a comfort of great significance. Their words of encouragement never brought that same feeling of ease that washes over you and tells the itching to stop. They are staring as you wash for the third, fourth, fifth time. They see you standing in the hall flickering the lights; you see that the light switch is stuck in the middle and it needs to be off to stop the house from burning down.

You’ve made it to twenty and all you see is not there and all you feel is not real. Are you real? You ask this of yourself and laugh. Of course you are real. But you’re not laughing anymore, because how can you know? You devise a plan to know if you are real and it works for a while. Nothing can disappear, so you can find everything. But you ignore that some things are lost, like the socks that get wedged into dryer crevices. Some things are not found and forgotten. You don’t forget.

Your mom finds you rocking back and forth after work one day. Can’t find it, can’t find it, can’t find it. You’ve lost something. She tries to help, but all she sees is you rocking, she doesn’t see that you’re not real. You find what you’ve lost -- a sweater-- and you’re real again. That piece of clothing is the first Jolly Rancher you’ve ever tasted and it means something.

This is when you meet him. Eventually, you will call him the best and worst thing that ever happened to you, but for now he is the devil. You do everything for him and he does nothing for you, but steal away the time you thought you had.

Somehow, at the age of twenty-one, you’re leaving home with him in tow. Your pockets are his pockets just as your breath is his breath. At the apartment, he wraps you up and swallows your life whole, decorating your skin in blue and green. What is love when door knobs are suddenly you’re enemy? A storm knocks out power and you escape to the bar with red lights that are really just pink. The roommates know, but no one says anything. They know you won’t listen and you know you weren’t ready to. Tonight you are. You’re done. Tonight you are. You’re done. You tell them and they all sigh in relief.

He spits you backup and his ghosts fade from green to yellow. Every part of you becomes you again. Some things are lost and you tell yourself that’s okay. And it is. You laugh at the light switches and at the soap for the dishes.

You’ve made it to twenty-four, a feat you silently celebrate. It’s cold outside and you fold your arms into your chest. Old friend’s hand is still reaching out. You decline. You never liked Jolly Ranchers in the first place.