Vignette

Reagan Johnson

Struggling to find the right words to say what you really mean. You write so intensely that the pen slices through the paper so when you decide once again that your words are useless, you crumple the papers underneath. Wanting to write a monologue of your vivid thoughts, but what’s going through your mind aren’t words. They’re watercolor portraits of your desires and marble statues of the future you’re trying to build. Trying to assemble the sentences like a 2000 piece jigsaw puzzle. You’re alone in your room, but your head is overcrowded. The people you want to be next to, the faces you want to see, the voices you want to hear all circle in your head like a carousel. You try to write what you’re thinking, but when they talk, you don’t hear their voice, but you watch music notes escape their lips because everything they say sounds like a symphony conducted by the most perfect composer. Their laugh sounds like a chuckling snare drum and their stare- though silent- feels like the sharp squeal of an army of violins suddenly ceasing. How do you verbally explain that? How do you show the way your watercolor portraits fade when you haven’t heard that snare drum in hours? And how your marble statues split down the middle when your 2AM over thinking takes over? How every time you see them or hear their name, your own symphony erupts in your stomach and flutters around like butterflies until you can barely catch your breath. It seems impossible to show how you feel because you didn’t even know it was possible to hear cymbals crashing during a quick glance. Or cliché violins when they’re gone. Or to even be able to compare something as simple as feelings to something as complex and beautiful as an orchestra… but then you met him.