"Sandman."

Catarina Sousa

“Sandman”

I found a photograph the other day
A few friends and I
During the anniversary of the day I started dying.
We had cake smeared on our faces
And hands held up high as if
We won nothing but the itchiness
And awkwardness of looking like
A fool to one another.
What else could we have won
That isn’t food worthy
Or even tastes that good?
Maybe the bond of having the same
Ugliness and unpopular pink and purple goo
In the middle of our eyes and ears.
But, that was all we had,
We had each other’s unworthy looks and
Eyelashes that closed together when we laughed too hard;
Or maybe the steps that appeared on our foreheads
As if they were carrying our brains to somewhere
Uncommon since it did appear uncommon anyway.
After all,
We were ugly kids
And something about gazing at the mirror in disgust
Made us like each other more and more and more.
We called ourselves friends and claimed everyone else
Everything else
Whoever else claimed themselves real
Was fake.
Or the fact that we were the fakest ones and lost
Our vein attitudes within each other’s lonesome eyes.
I cared about those eyes for a while.
Until I looked at mine and saw tiny specs of green and brown.
Change began to take its course unwillingly
So unwillingly, that as I cried to stay the same ,
More and more and more specs appeared.
I was growing up, and I was alone.
I needed to pretend that I was clueless about life,
About religion,
About sex,
About the rape and murder that happens only a few towns away.
I was too young to know that
There wasn’t much to believe in,
But I believed in too much.
I claimed the news made me insane
Or claimed myself tired to avoid talking on and on and on
About the man who killed his wife in front of his kids
Like an ignorant bastard.
I became scared of the world because I knew
Being in the wrong place, wrong time was too common,
And that my skin is as thin as paper
And a knife could gently glide by my hip
And cut it open too easily.
But, I kept growing up.
I wasn’t scared of clowns, bugs
Or the sandman, whom I thought could put me
Into a trance if he sprinkled too much dust on me.
Dust made up of his beliefs and favors,
That I thought would influence me to change mine.
Because I’m gullible enough to believe a grape was the forbidden fruit
Or that Adam and Eve really looked into each other’s eyes
During sex to whisper “I love you.”
But, I somehow realized that eating glass would be better
Than hanging out with friends who claimed to be friends
When other friends were at the right place, right time
I didn’t need anyone
I needed
Really sweet plums that would inspire growth
Rather than cake that screamed innocence.