I Feel Better

I left my house with my shoes in my hand.

My thoughts were fighting, getting their thrashing limbs tangled together, raising their varying voices to argue over stupid things. Normally these thoughts like to flow and wander and show up in strange towns with nothing but a banjo and a vagrant's beard. They don't brawl. They're not gentlemen, to be sure, but they're peaceful and usually make quite nice company.

But Sunday was a free-for-all. 

"She's not right in the head, she can't be right in the head! It's a choice, who you love. It's a choice, who attracts you. She should listen to them, they always told her what to believe, back when she was one of them." This one thumps the thick black book I've never managed to read cover-to-cover. This one stomps his foot and speaks like the red-faced, roundish men, passionate about their words.

"THEY DON'T KNOW ANYTHING! THEY'LL NEVER GET IT!!" And he won't shut up. And he won't stop screaming. He's heard it one too many times, all the church-goers words like "they deserve to die, they deserve hell, the faggots." He hates them all. He hates Conservatives. He hates my friends. He hates my teachers. He hates God.

"Nobody needs her." He shrugs, a sort of half-hearted gesture accompanied by a sigh and followed by a weak smile, one of those half-smiles, one of those pushover "it's alright" smiles. "What can you do?"

"She don't need nobody either." He stamps out a cigarette. He punches the sulky guy's lights out just because he can. 

I don't know why my thoughts are male.

But anyway. I walked. 

I saw a cat. He stared at me. I stared back. I meowed. He meowed. He went to licking himself. I stared some more, then left. I saw a fisher-boy. Not a man. Just a boy. I waved. He didn't. I saw bees. I ran away. 

Somehow, everything was okay after that. And all my thoughts went back to being hippies.

I went inside of there once, before it was taken over by ivy beasts. It's lonely now, I think.

The bridge makes me think of nice memories with nice people. The lake is too high to go underneath it though...

 I closed my eyes and imagined the paddle boats were steamboats. Like Huckleberry Finn status.

This guy, in his little boat, is probably really happy. I'm going to believe that.