A Vignette

Just a small memoir that I wrote.

Touching Constellations

The sun was setting as I returned to the small vacation house my parents had rented in California for the holidays. It was by the beach and the salt hung in the air, the sand swirling with the setting winds. My parents were out to a dinner, leaving my brother and I in the care of our neighbors. The house was quiet and smelled of earth and nature, the abundance of plants and flowers on every surface overwhelming. I changed into more comfortable clothes and sat on the couch, the television lazily flipped on playing some show that I didn’t care to concentrate on.

My mind and my eyes were focused on the window. How the oranges and purples and reds had begun to sink their way into the sky like watered-down tattoos, how the blues willingly disappeared. The day had been a long, silent ride: wandering along the beach, sleeping underneath trees, sitting in the small local diner and listening to the soft tinkle of old music while waiting for the small lunch I had ordered. Getting up from the couch, I pulled myself past the living room and down the hall to the kitchen. It would’ve been quite picturesque if the place wasn’t so lonely and empty. I poured a glass of lemonade, taking it upstairs with me to my room.

It wasn’t spacious, the place just big enough to have some room between the bed and the windows and the small desk. My guitar case was propped up against the pale blue wall, and my guitar was swimming in music sheets on my bed. Placing the glass of lemonade down, I walked towards the window. It was one of those awkward window seats with angles, which I used to think were pretty beautiful but now felt was kind of useless in the sense that they weren’t really comfortable to sit on. Opening the window, I pushed it up and basked in the evening breeze that swept into the room silently. I heard the rustling of the trees, and looked onto the open water, my window just barely above the treetops. 

My parents always told me to be careful around the house, don’t do anything you know might bring hurt onto yourself. They always told me that they believed that I would make the right decisions when time came to make decisions, and that I was mature enough to see the fine line between right and wrong. They told me to be cautious at all times.

And this is how I ignored them.

Pushing myself out of the windowsill torso first, I grabbed onto the top of the window sill as my legs were the last to come out of the room. The wind tangled my dark brown hair and I blew it out of my eyes, the air cold against my bare legs. A tingling sensation started up in my stomach as my whole body was out of the window, out of the room and onto the small roof above the porch.

The roof was rough against my skin as I sat down on it. If my parents ever saw me, they would ground me and scream at me and keep me under watch at all times, but I didn’t care. I laid down on my back and stared up at the sky. It was this blueish-purplish color that I loved, stars barely peeking out. This rich harmony of light and ozone and air, something that people had begun to forget the beauty of, something that people had begun to forget to cherish. I reached my hands up, pushing my palms against the cooling air, my stomach a storm of nervousness and fear and fearlessness as I just wanted to stay there on the roof forever and ever and hear the sound of the waves washing up against the shore and possibly taking me away back out to sea with them.

At that moment, I had never felt so chained down by the promises and the duties and the problems of being alive.