My Soul is a Butterfly

It was one of those years when I was always broke. When my feet felt out of sync with the world, or at least the midday traffic. When I thought that every 6 train and alarm clock and bus blocking a pedestrian walkway had a personal vendetta against my heart.

At lunchtime, the smoothie stand filled to the brim with suits, becoming a four-walled closet of briefcases and Blackberries, forced smiles and frustrated sighs and checked and re-checked watches, cologne and condescention and protein powder. The regular customers put tips in my jar. I recommended the smoothie with peanut butter and bananas, or the one with blueberries and rasberries. I smiled at everyone, especially the jerks. I wanted to stamp my smile onto their jerk hearts. I wanted to break out of my skin.

It was one of those years when I overused the word "love" in my poems. When I hibernated under blankets of smoke and turned off my phone and only saw the skyline from bedroom windows. When I lost my vocal chords. When I poured myself into someone else, until I was empty.

In the late afternoon, I was alone in the closet and became a smoothie artist. I wrote short stories on napkins and mixed bananas and coconut and soy milk. I told the cleaning guy from Mexico dirty jokes in Spanglish. I gave him the leftover smoothie in the blender. He told me there were not pretty girls like me in his country and I said he probably had not seen every girl in his country, or my country for that matter, and that it was a wildly unfair compliment. He bought me a rose once and it made me feel sad. I gave the rose to my boyfriend.

It was one of those years when it was too much and not enough at once. When I was cold all the time, even standing over fire. When I wanted to sleep through winter and wake up in fresh fields far away.

The only regular customer after the lunch rush and before the dinner rush was the gray haired crazy. He carried a compressed stench about him, like the smell of 40 million garbage trucks and 40 million sewage plants packed inside the body of a single human. Sometimes, his smell was so strong that I had to escape to the bathroom to vomit. I don't know how it's possible to smell that badly. The gray haired crazy liked to yell at me. I always did something wrong. There was no "stuff on the stuff." There was too much "stuff on the stuff." I was a "stupid whore." The crazy never ordered smoothies, only food, so one day I made him one for free to see what would happen, the one with the bananas and the peanut butter, the kind that makes you feel like you're ten years old. I held my breath while I brought it to his table. He stopped yelling at me that day, but he didn't stop smelling. Then the next week, he started yelling at me again. I guess he didn't remember.

It was one of those years where I was always hungry or claustrophobic or pretending not to be scared. When my voice quivered in front of an audience of outlines as I read poems about sunsets and murderers and revolutions that start with oatmeal cookies.

In the late afternoon silence, I saw a figure approaching through the window, and thought it must be the gray haired crazy. Instead, it was a man with a turban that had a purple jewel in the center and very serious eyes. He never stopped looking at me as he walked inside, right up to the smoothie counter. He took my hand and I should have been scared but I inexplicably trusted him.

It was one of those years when I wanted to trust everyone so badly, even when I didn't.

He looked in my eyes and said that I would always love more than I would be loved, but that it would never make me sad.

He said that I would someday struggle less than I am, and someday be successful, but not in a straight line. There would be ups and downs and lefts and rights.

He said that I hold my own happiness in my soul.

He said that my soul is a butterfly.