Cookie dough

My nights sound like reruns and my cat purring, and the click clack of my knitting needles. I became a recluse, I am not one, but it found me, this lifestyle. I have nowhere to go, and going just makes me feel more alone. My money has lost it’s lycra stretch and my legs hurt thinking about the lonely roads it would have to walk down to find a place worth stopping for.

I know that the cookie dough belly I have collected isn’t all that attractive to some people, but it’s not something I signed up for either, so I instead choose to enjoy it’s cushion wrapped around my tender nerves, insulating the pain that has been born over and over again. It’s a good cover actually, people think that I am just fat, lazy, ill disciplined, but the truth is far worse. I am padding the shattered glass, the cragged rocks and the thorns that have all manifested because of the narcissistic world I live in.

Oh there is hope, there are my dreams, that sail on the clouds before me, like a castle I go to in my sleep. Spider droppings of ink splashed across wrinkled pages and crosses bearing my lists that circumstances make almost impossible to achieve. I could if I could just breath, I put my hand out exposed and vulnerable, palm side up in expectation to receive, patiently waiting for the help from above, or a good atheist to come and lift me up. The world I live in looks to their phones to catch them all while the silent sit without phones waiting for someone to catch them at all hoping that an eye will flicker a recognition of need. My nights sound like reruns so that I can catch my breath and find my cookie dough loving friend.

– Charlee Pearson