People tell me things.
They always have. A lot of the time I don't ask them to open up, they just do. Take this week for instance. It is the last fight of summer. A summer where I am officially done breeding and my children now start to grow like weeds against the landscape of my aging body. I have been fairly relaxed and open to what the world is offering me. I have been chill. I have also been listening. And people just keep talking.
A friend called me up and told me all about his new "friend with benefits" in detail.
I was painting my toenails and wondering if I should be more adventurous in bed.
He told me how she liked to reenact famous movie sex scenes involving food.
I laughed into the phone like a hyena.
Another friend told me a story about a kiss.
A kiss so deep and long and so intense that she almost pissed herself.
She forgot to breathe.
I found myself circling the rim of my kid's milk cup with my finger.
I touched my clavicle.
And then at the post office I was listening to a familiar stranger tell me how I remind him of his dead wife.
She died a mysterious death.
She always wore scarves.
I ate my apple.
I adjusted my baby in the sling.
I shook all night.
My mom cried on the phone to me because her mother had a good day.
My clairvoyant grandmother with the bad tick tock heart had a great day.
And they went bra shopping and no one had to sit down.
I cradled the phone against my ear and shoulder and rolled up to a stop sign and looked into the sun.
I like being the one you can come to.
I like being the one you tell.
I always imagine the scene from Dirty Dancing at the end, when Johnny is about to lift Baby, and he scrunches up his face and mouths the words, "And I owe it all to you" and I think about how I wouldn't really be much of a writer or an artist if I had not been listening so much to all the people around me.
Listening to the things they tell me or the pictures they paint with their bodies.
I can't do math but I can extrapolate all night long.
I know what you want to tell me even when you open your mouth and make mute.
And I am Swayze.
I am here for you baby.