Estelle

We both know the feeling of a broken home at 4am the way a preacher knows his pulpit. She notices my journal, it’s scribbled in but she doesn’t make me feel weird about it,  she can tell it’s been a long day and it’s only gonna get longer…offers me a cup of hot tea but I never touch the stuff besides…..I’m gonna need something harder than that.

I notice her smile immediately it’s the  only thing she has to offer, you can see it in the way her lips stretch across her cheeks like arms in an unconditional embrace.  Her finger nails are painted, there are a few rings on them, and she would love for  her hair to grow in again soon. Before the chemo her hair dresser made it real big on top and gave her bangs, she liked it like that. 

She will  never be fully informed on some things just like I will never understand who really raises and rides horses, then again she’s been here a lot longer than me she’s seen everything from men who dangle cigarettes between their teeth to women who are walking hypocrites.

I stand up, I give her my chair but I feel like there’s something more happening here…..I feel like a wet, dirty, sponge that will never come clean, I feel like her heart cannot be restocked often enough, I feel like someone who wants to help stuck on the wrong side of helplessness, I feel like everything just got complicated, I feel like I was taught to say a lot of stupid shit about “country folk”  and I feel like if I were to identify myself as gay this conversation would stop……it’s what I do, I feel, I get scared sometimes and I hide.

But, in 1 minute and 18 seconds I’m gonna walk out of here with a car full of friends, my journal, and a 6 pack of beer while there’s a Woman still sitting behind a granite counter somewhere in Texas who says she wants nothing more than to hear my whole story… all 78,987 miles of it, I can feel it though y’all she’s heard more opinions and cowboy small talk than Jesus has heard wishes so I only find the nerve to tell her the good stuff, that she’s the kindest thing to happen to me in a very long time and I want to leave it at that because people who are not  kind, have taken it farther… have made her feel like a grade school crush on the dusty back roads  or a baby in a bonnet before dropping her hopes and watching them shatter. 

I feel like she’s been waiting here a long time for the one who will come two stepping through her door in a pair of boots without making her feel like it’s her job to pick up his pieces when he’s been cracked again.  She doesn’t need him or any other man but she doesn’t know that either and I’m just hoping like crazy she will realize she’s the one, the answer lies in.  I feel like she’s 50 years old wearing 65 badly,  crying inside like certain kinds of dances a song made to speak through you, a symphony if we weren’t so taken with movements.

 But she was never given those words she has not been told  she can definitely change the world, she knows some people do but not country girls and not with lottery tickets. So, I finally ask her what I’ve been feeling the entire time I’m standing here still getting scared like I do sometimes really, really ready to drive I ask…..can I help you?…..is there anything I can do?  Her smile collapsed, that beautiful skin it went loose, her heart fell crooked she said….not remembering my real name “I can tell Sweetheart,  by the journal and the bottles of beer…were both taken with bullshit, we’ve both believed in mean Gods, we both spend our money on things that break too easily like…..people and I can tell you think you’ve had it rough  so especially you should know kid this is what I do…. I dream…..I get scared sometimes…….and I’m gonna beat this thing on someone’s terms…..it just might not be mine.