All the Lives We Live

Published in The Carson Review 2021

The Literary Arts Journal of Marymount Manhattan College 221 E. 71st Street
Department of English & World Literatures
New York, New York 10021

Details in the Back

There's something powerful about the silence you experience during something traumatic. When you simply block the noise out and only see the colors. Passing passing like cars on the street, but you can't, in fact, hear anything. You can only remember the hues, the smell, the softness of your cashmere sweater. You don't hear the words, but you understand their faces. And you're silent too because you aren't, in fact, processing anything. You just exist there at that moment, and when you look back on it, you can't really say anything ever happened at all because you were focusing too much on the details in the back. I remember the room was blue, baby blue; I remember the red t-shirt he was wearing. I don't know why he said he wanted to break up, but I can still smell the cedar cologne he was wearing. I remember I was crying. I remember him yelling, I remember the deep maroon color of my blood when I ripped the glass shard out from the frame he threw me against, but I don't remember the slurs he was using. I guess that's how I am. I block everything out. And at night, when I try and sleep, my ceiling becomes a projection of these moments, these traumas. And I watch them replay over and over again. I watch my first kiss, the way it was forced, the broken swing on the playground. I see my dog Snoopy on the floor of the Vet's office, looking into my eyes, thanking me for letting her go, the olive blanket she was lying on. I remember the wood table I stood on as a kid, pretending to be Princess Ariel on her rock in the ocean, my father's anger when he saw me. I can describe every single Lego we had in the toy box, but I can't tell you the words that came from my father's mouth when he yelled at me. I'm afraid I'm living my life constantly keeping in and blocking out, because at a young age, I was handed a script to memorize. I was to only answer what I was asked and ask the same question back. I had never thought to question it, considering in most cases, it was the only applicable dialogue. My thoughts, however, have changed. Humans aren't a cutout, and one size does not fit all. Why has the script not changed after all this time? It has become another greeting rather than an honest good intended question. We are conditioned unknowingly to answer when asked and to not speak unless given permission. Being asked, "How are you?" shouldn't have a concrete answer. Some days I'm a pale blue, the sky's color right before it rains, the cold chill on the concrete. Or I'm the ink, the sticky black ink that bleeds from my pen as I write sappy poems in the dark corner of my room. Some mornings, I’m the steam that comes from the fresh pour of coffee into my mug and the warm embrace on my fingers as I wrap them around it. How I am is never concrete, it should never be defined by a word. I am in a constant state of flux between things and places and sounds, and they need to come out, these stories need to be told. Because, I no longer wish to be polite. I'm tired of pretending what's wrong doesn't exist. I'm conditioned to store the memories away, tuck my feelings into bed, answer the question with "good, how are you?" But I am human, and good is no longer good enough.

Published in New York University Literary Magazine: The Rational Creature, Vo. 8 “How are you?”