Tales from the Archives: Me and the Sky

Even though I wrote this more than nearly 15 years ago, I clearly remember where I was when these words poured out of me. 

The conditions were ripe for me to write a blog post:

It was rainy.
I was sitting in a coffee shop, drinking chai and looking out the window.
I was alone, feeling a lot of feelings. I was inspired--I had just finished reading one of my favorite novels ("The Sky is Everywhere" by Jandy Nelson). 

So I looked around, took a breath, then wrote.
Wrote what I saw. What I felt.  Tried not to be critical of myself.
Rinse and repeat. 

And that's pretty much how it usually goes for me every single time I write one of these blogs. I feel big feelings, I see interesting scenes, I put it down into words to make sense of it all. I get anxious to share it, then share anyway. 

This one takes us pretty far back in the archives. Written in 2011. Found on an old laptop. 

xo, Lindsay


I am sitting at the coffee shop. It’s where I do my best thinking these days.

I’m not alone. The plants across from me keep me company. They stretch their leaves toward the streams of light shining through the waterfall of windows. No matter how far the leaves stretch, the sun keeps its distance. The plants play by the rule book. They make direct eye contact. Refuse distractions. Show interest. Pay attention.

Damn, I think. The plants know what they’re doing.

Still, the sun is too busy watching the world revolve around it to notice.

Ah yes. You can’t make someone stay, as hard as you stretch. A lesson learned the hard way. The lesson I learned the hard way.

The stems remind me of my arms: reaching for something that is always shifting. What is bright and nourishing and necessary suddenly turns shadow and dark and disappointing. The sun will not stay in place. It’s meant to leave, showering others with attention.

One of the leaves stares down at the floor in defeat. It sees the truth before the others.

I sip my chai tea, let the spice and cinnamon soak my palette. My thoughts turn to you. My former sun. You look more cloud with your dark blue denim and gray Henley shirts.

Are you shining for someone else today?

I sigh. Everything around me is changing.

The espresso machine whirrs the beans into coffee. Two teenage boys with skinny jeans and messenger bags and red and blue flannel knock their knees together. Their metamorphosis from caterpillar friends to butterfly lovers is nearly complete. The magic is happening in the space between their locked pupils, creating a key to open the door into a whole new universe. I can see it. I am nearly burned by the sparks erupting out of their glitter volcanoes.

Red Flannel is wearing blue nail polish that matches mine. I take another sip of chai.

I remember that, I think as I dodge another spark. I remember falling in love over coffee cups and popped personal bubbles that we pricked with careful consideration. A high five turned hand graze turned hug turned…well.

I gulp my tea and try to swallow the lump in my throat. It doesn’t budge.

I’m worried. Time is taking its eraser and blurring the edges of my memories of us. The rubber is leaving smatterings of pink: surrendering pieces of itself all in the name of deletion.

But that’s me too, I guess. Surrendering pieces of myself. All in the name of deletion. Of you. Of us.

The gaping wound is turning scar. They don’t tell you that part hurts too.
The healing part. It hurts too.

I stare out the glass window overlooking the city street. The sky can’t say no, so it’s invited everyone inside of her, thinking that will make her whole so now she’s a concoction of cloud and clear.  She drops rain as she drapes a rainbow cloak across her shoulders. A frown of technicolor.
Or an upside-down smile, depending on your perspective.

“ROY G. BIV,” you taught me. “That’s how you remember the rainbow colors.”

“Red, orange, yellow, green,” I ticked off.

“Blue, indigo, violet,” you finished. You laughed. The whole world turned mirror, reflecting ROY G. BIV’s face back to me but brighter, like someone had turned up the saturation way high.

“Dude, look at the rainbow,” Red Flannel now says to Blue Flannel. They smile at each other. “It’s so bright.” Spark, spark, spark.

A wedding party walks by the windows. I stare at the scene that is salt in a wound, but it’s mixed with sugar too. I see the sweetness of the moment now. I wouldn’t have a month ago when I was still bleeding out from keeping in all of my emotions. The ones that melted and fused together to create the ending that marked the beginning of my coffee shop dates with myself.

I look at the Flannels. I sip. They spark.

A phalanx of men with beards and navy tuxes and beers equipped with fake smiles strides by as the photographer tells them to “Look! Look here! Good!”

The girls follow suit: a gaggle of giggles in green chiffon. They’re more comfortable in front of the camera, posing and preening like peacocks. They huddle under clear plastic umbrellas that cover but don’t conceal.

Then, the bride and groom. The happy radiates off them, their smiles their own personal sunbeams. They don’t need to reach like me or the plants because their arms are right there, tangled like roots or braided like hair. Like they’re one in the same.

Even the sky respects a romance, so she flips the rain’s switch to OFF. The rainbow brightens. We all stare at the ceiling of color above us.

“Beautiful!” the photographer says. “Just gorgeous!”

And it is. Beautiful. Just gorgeous.

I pictured a wedding scene. Me in white, flowers, friends, rings. All of it. I do, we do. We all do, don’t we? We all let our minds wonder.

Just then, the sky starts to rain down.

But that’s the problem with me and the sky. We can’t decide how to feel. And I love her for that. Because I smile when I cry, too.

I fold my arms into my body. I do not want to stretch like the plants. 

Unlike the plants and the sun, I do not need you to grow. I once thought I did.

But my heart can be a lightbulb with 100 watts. I can be my own source of heat. I can light within.

Right now, my electrical wires are criss-crossed. But that doesn’t mean I won’t untangle them.
Just like these plants, I’ll change. I’ll grow—so subtle you won’t even notice.

But then you’ll compare the then from the now. And all you’ll see is change.