flannel sheets

she woke up between warm sheets in her empty frozen room. she never wanted leave the comforters, her fortress of pillows. she was a trapeze artist: one person was holding her ankles and another swung towards her, with arms outstretched. choose a direction! it’s not that she couldn’t face the world today, nothing quite so melodramatic or interesting. she could easily rise and dress, stuff her warm limbs into icy foreign fabrics, splash water on her face and move through the day. she couldn’t choose: apple or orange, toast or cereal, the next year of her life. couldn’t she just lie in limbo, make angels in the sheets, lie with her bare stomach pressed to the mattress and her head at the wrong end of the bed? indecision turns to apathy perched on her shoulder.
instead let’s think about everything that is irrelevant, because the summer’s too late to decide you know. pack a suitcase with some things, find a map, read a book. and most importantly: find a willing friend, someone who can listen to you talk about stupid stuff for hours, list your anxieties alphabetically with fluctuating pitch and urgency. it’s not running away, it’s just running laps; you’ll come back eventually. out of one hundred decisions you can make this one –
she thinks about this from under the striped flannel. indecision twists into motivation; a place, a plan, a project. as long as she keeps moving she’s accomplished something. as long as she keeps planning you couldn’t call her static.