Annabelle Day #5

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It’s 4:07am and I am afraid to fall asleep because I have so much to do. I have work at 8:00am so I will probably get up in an hour and go to the gym (since I’m up anyway). I see my friends tonight and Annabelle died five years ago. She is why I am going to see my friends tonight. Currently, I have pink curlers inside my pink bonnet (my skin is ugly so my hair has to compensate).

What you need to know is: I have been sitting in the dark for hours and all I can think is, I miss her.

I miss her more than I tend to admit. She was funny and kind and even loved people that were weird (like me). She had cool clothes and fun shoes but most importantly, I'm almost positive she had a perfect soul. Once, when we were in church singing the closing hymn, she spat her gum out on the hymn book mid breath and we almost died laughing. She was a terrible singer.

At the bindery, where we worked together, she would sneak in to scare me in the 1970s style bathroom with the scratchy walls. (I scared her too, don’t worry). Believe it or not, Annabelle left that same bathroom with toilet paper coming out the back of her pants twice because she would line the seat.

Annabelle kept her dishes in the secret back cabinet and asked her mom to make me a jar of cinnamon applesauce because I loved it so much. Annabelle let me try on her clothes and jewelry even though it was probably annoying. She was a saint for that alone.

She was a pumpkin for Halloween and she loved the vampire diaries. She wore a wolf t-shirt to bed and often fell asleep with a flosser between her teeth. Annabelle was full of life and energy and that freshman year with her and my other friends was so perfect and so obnoxious.

October feels like Annabelle might be a little bit closer than during the rest of the year. We became friends in October and she left in October. I used to make her voice recordings with life updates. We would talk about God and heartbreak and what it means to be human since she’s my guardian angel now, but I don’t really know about God anymore, so she and I stopped talking. Maybe I’ll make her a voice recording today. Hiking still makes me anxious sometimes. I wish it didn’t. But I went on a drive into the mountains and wrote a poem. I won’t share that one yet.

Instead I will share two stupid poems in honor of Miss Annabelle Louise Nielson.

The first is the first poem I ever wrote in college (when I was still a theater major and didn’t overuse parentheses). This is the only poem of mine she ever read.

Is it about my first kiss? Yes.

Embarrassing? Deeply.

The second is my most poem recent on the same subject: a kiss.

Different tone, but still embarrassing.

Annabelle, I love and miss you. 143.

-

First Kiss

Losing control.

Wanting more, to be closer.

Feeling whole, a little high.

Melting, nothing else matters.

Natural desires push the limits.

Nothing else matters.

He chose me.

-

kissing you kind of sucked

i knew you were mormon 

when you kissed me,

too fast too fast.

maybe you were scared 

that god would open up the ceiling 

and say,

             “i knew you were sinning.”

instead of lingering lips 

along my collarbone

or tracing tenderly

down the small of my back,

it goes

kiss kiss tongue kiss

bra removed by clumsy fingers

face pressed between my breasts.

it’s funny how religion can take

the most sacred things,

and render them cheap.

-

Yours Truly,

Macy