night walls

I have this feeling in my legs I had when I was young enough to still be tucked in, when bedtime was always loathed and elaborate plans were concocted to stay up later, to hang around and soak up the adult-ness of night. It' s a feeling of textured wall, cool and slick with gloss finish paint, running along the backside of my legs. My heels, my calf's, my hamstrings. 

When I couldn't or didn't want to sleep when I was little I would always push my booty into the right angel where the twin bed and the wall meet, put legs up the wall and move them. The two fleshy lines would make shapes and have conversations, follow each other and sometimes lift off the wall into outer space and land again, back on the cool bedroom wall. It felt like the safest place to be, feeling the texture exfoliate the back of my little person legs as I ran them across my dark bedroom wall. Watching the legs I was merely a spectator of life, I wasn't in the legs,  I was in the audience at their show, I preferred this feeling, the watching, the not being.

  My first bedroom,  my nursery had bright blue walls with hot air balloons painted on the wall next to where my bed was. One was a Valentines Hot Air Balloon that was pink with red hearts. I loved staring at that one the most. The Balloon room was tiny,  and I found joy in the smallness of the room and that we had that in common. 

 My last memory of me in that room was my small self on the bed by the hot air balloons sobbing. It was the kinda crying you do so hard that your throat gets achy, your body shakes, you are dripping snot everywhere, your eyes feel ripped at the edges from all the wiping, the linens around you are wet. You try everything you can to imagine yourself in a different place, a different person, a different story. You give up, deflated, a  slop human mush on a lunch try bed, and sleep. That was the sound in the air with the Valentines Hot Air Balloon. The animal sounds of a child at night. Painted Balloons sound beautiful- they sound like cartoons and donuts and bubbles. Together we made that small room shake with our big feelings.