People always tell me I am a good writer. But, I am always unsure if anyone actually means it. I’ve lived with a disability for the past 21 and a half years and for most of my life, I’ve felt “good” at absolutely nothing. I am now an editor for The Skidmore News, although I haven’t written an article yet this year. I feel like my brain is broken. My mind is on fire and I need to write, but my mind is on fire, so I can’t write. I am going to write a poem about life. That rhymes, doesn’t it? Maybe I am good at something after all.
I am downtown right now with my roommate's backpack and a library book.
I don’t trust myself with anything that isn’t mine.
I already got dirt on the library book and spilled my medicine in the front pocket of the bag.
How do I want to be a teacher, if I don’t trust myself with anything that isn’t mine?
Sometimes I feel like an error in science. I can’t even write my name without breaking a tip of a pencil. I take medication to help with my unlabeled mood disorder, but sometimes it makes my mouth twitch because my brain has been damaged for the past 21 and a half years.
People get uncomfortable when I say I am brain damaged.
But it’s true.
And in the oddest way, it validates me.
I wouldn’t think twice if someone with a broken arm dropped their library book on the ground or had trouble screwing on the cap of a medicine bottle. Their arm is injured.
My brain is injured.
I don’t want this to be a poem about my disability.
That’s another story.
Well now I am doubting that,
because I only intended to talk about it for one line.
All I think about is Athens, Greece.
I think about Diana and Lauren and Grace-Anna and Marianna and Katerina and Dimitris and Marya and Johnny and Dima and Andrew and Sam and Haley and everyone else.
I think about Philopappou Hill and the Acropolis and the Kekkos and that liquor store on my street with the sweetest owners; Palo, his wife and his sons whose names I can’t remember.
My street. It is not my street anymore.
But it is still my home.
My home is somewhere I lived for four months with people I still have not known for a year.
My home is somewhere I no longer live.
I think of the ugly tablecloth with the fruit pictures on it; the colors were absolutely hideous.
And the wooden chairs.
And the tile floor that was always coated in my toast crumbs.
I think of my room with the doors that never shut and blew open with the wind.
I still feel guilty for taking the room with the balcony.
I was the messiest, the path to the door was never clear.
But if I hadn’t taken that room, things would have been different.
And things were perfect.
I miss the sound of the laughter that filled that tiny apartment.
I miss my decrepit mattress and the prickly brown and red blanket.
I miss the red couch.
I miss the door to the apartment, but I can’t picture it and that makes me upset.
I miss the blue picture.
And the mirror.
I miss the cabinets.
I miss the dangerous bathtub and the fucked up drain.
I miss seeing the yellow church and eating Greek doritos and walking to the farmer’s market and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing.
I laughed so hard, I forgot to look around me.
I was living in a dream.
I miss when Athens was a dream.
I miss when I didn’t know Athens was going to be a dream.
I miss how scared I was to go there.
I miss when “Lauren” and “Diana” were just names on a sheet of paper.
I miss when I was left in a small Athenian apartment with a box of cornflakes.
I miss when Lauren opened the door, that I still can’t remember the look of,
and I stood silent for a minute,
too scared to say hello.
That would’ve been 30 more seconds in the best dream I’ve ever had.
I miss when Diana woke me up every morning in greek in that tone of voice,
that I’ll never be able to mimic.
I miss being suffocated by love.
I miss when I didn’t know I could feel that much love.
I miss when I didn’t know that a box of cornflakes could grow a home.
I miss not realizing that one day,
it would all be gone.
I miss being reminded of my grandpa everywhere I went.
I miss convincing myself that I passed him in the street every time I left my apartment.
I miss feeling like we were together again.
I always replay hugging Katerina for the last time and getting into that cab.
I really need to get back to reading that library book, but this is the first time that words are coming out in the way I want them to.
Maybe this is the article that will be published.
I always replay hugging Katerina and getting into the cab.
Lately, memories have been punching me in the gut.
I remember watching the city fade into the distance.
It didn’t seem real.
I remember being envious of the cars driving the other way,
they were opening the story book that I was closing.
I now have this fantasy.
I am walking around Lesvos and I bump into a man smoking a cigarette on his front steps.
He lives in a small white house with an overgrown garden. By some miracle, there’s a perfect bed of pink roses. I notice my name is carved into a tree. Tree carvings always remind me of my grandpa.
The man approaches me.
I realize I know him.
His name is Gregory. He died on November 14, 2016 in Middletown, New Jersey.
He realizes he knows me.
I am still sitting in Uncommon Grounds and it's pouring rain.
I have no desire to leave, not because of the rain.
I love walking in the rain.
I have no desire to leave because I am living in a memory.
I am living in fiction.
I am rewinding the clock and magic is real.
One day I will go home. I will step on the toast crumbs and hear the balcony door slam shut and get scratched by the wool blanket and nearly crack my head open in the bathtub.
I will eat a huge coffee bun and watch the yellow and purple bus pass.
I will see the cats.
And the blue sky.
I’ll pray I’ll never wake up from the dream.
I need to be home at 6:00 to play jeopardy with my housemates.
I am walking in the rain to pick up food with my roommate’s backpack and my library book.
I need to go to Congress Street CVS now.
I am going to see if Dimitris and Katerina are still at Kekkos.
Lauren just made pasta and Diana is changing her outfit for the 1500th time tonight.
Music is ringing throughout the apartment as we await our company.
I need to check what time bus number 452 comes. I have my three hour long class on Monday for the first time in two weeks.
The church bells are ringing
but I am not sure which side of the world they are coming from.
The man in the white house with the perfect bed of pink roses just invited me inside.
He grabs the library book from my hand and slowly takes a handkerchief out of his pocket, and in the most gentle way, he blots the dirt off the page.
He looks at me and a single teardrop falls from his right eye, as he says with a grin,
“See, kiddo... I always knew you would find your way home.”