|
|
|
White noise.
Water patters on the asphalt road, and the concrete sidewalks; Droplets dance on cut grass and carefully planted trees.
Car tires spray mist, and flow like a river of their own.
Orange street lights glimmer off of the small puddles and the rain glazed floor.
There are no voices,
just white noise.
The neighbors sleep soundly, there is no bass pounding through my walls.
If I take the time to look outside and listen to the music, it brings melodrama and memories that I dare not tell as stories.
The scent of vanilla fills my mind.
Why vanilla?
For the love of god, and for the sake of my own sanity, I cannot discern:
why
vanilla???
Of all the thoughts and feelings I have,
of all the things I associate with these cold and lonely nights, where the only thing I hear is rain, and the only thing I see are empty streets lit by orange lights...
I can never figure out
why the scent of vanilla comes to mind,
and why it's so familiar?
It's comforting,
horrifyingly so.
Horrifying in the sense that I don't know why it comes to mind, and why it's comforting.
I can't figure out anyone that I know smelled like vanilla, or a place that smelled like it.
Headlights swim by the freeway, and I continue to listen. Sometimes the silence is broken by the bleeping sound on my computer. The sound of someone messaging me with a smile(an emoji, obviously),
a "what are you up to"
a "how are you"
or something of the sort.
Nostalgic really.
Nights like these fill me with memories. Good and bad.
Sitting, isolated, in an unlit room, staring at the rain and wanting to run.
Looking at the street lights, a tall fence, and the glittering grass, thinking of the romance of jumping over that fence to venture off and confess a prohibited love.
Walking to someone's home, filling the silent street with laughter over an adventure gone awry.
Sneaking through a silent house to gain access to the internet, so I could talk with friends at hours where I honestly should have been sleeping.
Telling someone that I loved them over the phone after weeks of being separated by an ocean, and expressing my excitement for their return.
Riding in a car with angsty music playing, falling asleep on others' shoulders and talking about the insignificant things in life.
Walking to a bridge where I contemplated the worth of my life.
Admitting, much too late, to someone that I couldn't handle having them in my life anymore.
The cold glare of a friend long lost.
The warm smile of a heart long broken.
Showering after being showered by the sky.
Innocent screams from pranks made when power has gone out.
I have walked beyond my past, and I do not live in it; I try not to live in it.
But I live with it, because the past made me who I am.
And nights like these make me contemplate the past, and how it affected me in the present.
It gives me the time to think of the small, insignificant, details of the present.
And then think of the gifts that I have been blessed with, like an undeserved love.
But there are always two thoughts that plague my mind when I take the time to think of these things:
Smiles that I have not seen, and laughs that I haven't heard, for years.
and why the hell I keep thinking of the scent of vanilla.
Thoughts that have flooded my mind every time I have taken pause to think,
so much that they have almost become, much like the rain,
an inescapable white noise.
 ebilshady · Wed Sep 14, 2016 @ 11:30am · 0 Comments |
|
|
|
|
|
