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First Thoughts

My fingers are like a corpse’s, cold and slow to move. I run them over the keys, fumbling and pressing, writing. I’m always pensive late at night, but only when I’m alone, thinking of shapes and colors and forms, the beauty I long to experience and express. I’m thinking about chlorine right now, the smell of it in swimming pools, the smell of it in my crisp hair after swimming, my body wrapped in swimsuit and a hotel towel atop a cheap mattress, flipping through cable channels available in the room. Chlorine that would be poisonous, but so sweet to smell; the smell of cleanliness and the smell of sunshine-filled, but chilly, ice cream sandwich days. Like the smell of lemon hand wipes, the strong scent of fabricated fruit masking alcohol. They feel wet and sticky at first, but dry to be soft, dry into nothingness. On long drives to Oklahoma, we’d stop sleepily in the dead of night at gas stations and clean up with those wipes, and in the darkness back on the road I’d spread them out over the shaded car window panes. I’d let them dry until they were held up by nothing, I’d touch them and they’d fall to my lap, a square residue on the pane and a soft, lemon-scented cloth in my hands. In my cold fingers, my corpse fingers.