25 cents about Friends

Amazingly enough my heart has learned to bounce. Fragile and delicate emotions have replaced themselves with a quarter machine novelty. Like a little red rubber ball I had when I was little, how I remember how it bounced. I remember vividly throwing that ball as hard as we could and watching it bounce from harsh angles and hard services until it ran out of momentum and rolled unharmed under the refrigerator or behind a bookshelf. As a child I was bewildered by that ball, how it took what force I gave it and became something so much more entertaining than a seamless ball of rubber. I never once acknowledged the damage that kind of reckless abandon leaves behind. Broken. That's what little red balls leave behind. It never even notices. Crash. The lamp is cracked. Smack. Someone got a black eye. Bang. Another stack falls down onto the fall. Wosh. Water spills on to the carpet. And then we rushed off to the ball, to find it, hoping it wasn't lost and completely ignoring the scene it created. It never stopped, it couldn't hear, it couldn't see, it didn't care... it just bounced when it was forced to. So now I'm an adult, the allure is gone and I am scared. I see my heart rebound after harsh words or hard questions and I am terrified. I am happier without hearing you, I am happier without seeing or feeling you. Happy. And yet so dangerously unaware of what you need before I am lost, slipping out of sight...rolling out of your mind.