Ground Report

It’s not that she’s depressed. She just always seems to think of sad things, right when she knows, knows, knows she OUGHT to feel elated, stunned into happiness by all the beauty that she sees. Whether it’s a small child laughing in the park, or the way the leaves look, all colors-ever-changing-green-to-yellow-to-red-to-brown, or the way the breeze shifts her hair just, just, just as she was about to shift it herself. All these sights, she sees, she feels, she acknowledges, she is satisfied with having witnessed. Yet she still cannot find it in herself to feel HAPPY. To laugh full-bellied laughs with friends, to feel the need to run to the bathroom because of the overwhelming, frank happiness inside of her. It is not there. She does not know where it went. It all just tumbled out of her, one day, and didn’t even bother telling her why or where or how come. She feels shy asking for it back, but not because she misses it any less. She does. Or at least, she knows that the happy side of her misses it, wants it back, needs to have it back, back, back. Come back! she wants to scream, but the scream is only in her head, as are the words, and the thoughts, and the things, things, things that she wants so badly to tell people that she’ll never get to, she knows she’ll never get to. Oh how they would laugh, and cry, and feel astonished to know the thoughts she thinks! Her thoughts, so rich and dark and frightening to herself, because they run so deep, how they might scare, shock! Or maybe someone somewhere would cry tears, large crybaby tears, they couldn’t stop them, they were so heavy! and also laugh, huge, gasping bursts of laughter because she’s so funny sometimes, the things that she thinks, and she’s so sad sometimes, feeling pity for the homeless man, and for the man she watches, who’s watching the other girl, who’s flirting for attention from another man. Always on the outside, she is. Always watching, watching, watching. Things are always happening. Nothing ever stops. She knows these things, but the unknown in this equation, this massive, never-ending equation of things, of life, of heartbeats and breathing and embarrassing moments and oh-shit-no-one-saw-keep-going memories, all these crushes and term papers and children and fights and tears and skirts and warm weather and cold winds and lonely moons—where does she fit in to all of it? She thought that with the largeness of it all, all the tiny pockets of things that she’s seen and found and heard of, that she would find somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, that she could crawl into, a tiny hole, a corner, a heaven. But she hasn’t. She hasn’t. So she goes to the park, she sits on a bench. And she watches, watches, watches.