30 Minute Musings by Colleen T.

They are ants, and I am the child with the magnifying glass.
But that isn’t right, I muse. It’s overused. Overrated. A child with a magnifying glass has little power, other than the ability to roast an insect from the inside out and watch it writhe, with the option of total disinterest. I am no child with a magnifying glass, I think, dragging my left foot on the ground, feeling the rough concrete pull against the calluses on my toes. I am no god, either. No ultimate, over lording figure pondering my creations. I chew on the straw that leads to my small box of apple juice, watching someone—a tall, tan girl—pick at her nails as she chats with a boy. Both are four floors beneath me. I can’t hear the entrails of their conversation, nor even really pick out any words. Simply various laughs and shrieks as I rub my tired eyes.

I’ve already tried speaking to someone new, merely because I couldn’t find a friend. The talk was short lived, with my seemingly unwilling partner averting my gaze, as I tried to follow through with the basics I’ve learned from television and my mother. Something light, generic, said with a smile and enough personal space given. Perhaps my smile showed too much teeth, or my voice was uncomfortably, unnaturally happy, for all I was given back were curt answers and a tightening of the arms around the body, as if I were somehow going to do harm.

I think on it now, as I brood on my status and these moving colors beneath me. It seems all of my first impressions end up portraying me as the candy wrapper mistakenly hung in the Louvre. There are better options than my awkward silences and my outbursts of hyperactivity. I remember being asked if I was bipolar. The question seemed foolish and strange.

“No,” I replied, and left it at that, perplexed. The thought now makes me smile, and I drag up more juice, swishing it around my cheeks. I am many things, but not bipolar, nor a god, nor a bored child on a hot summer day. I contemplate this. If I am none of those, then what ultimately am I? A breeze passes through, and I tap my fingers on the peeling railing, peering down and being somewhat bothered that there are so many beating hearts down there, and then there is mine, pulsating to its own discomfited rhythm up here. Of course, I am the girl in a blue cotton dress on the top floor with an apple juice box, unable to find her friend and resorting to comfort through the evening light and imagining conversations I will never have. But I should be more than that.

I should be better than that.

There is no pride in where I am. This time spent reflecting on such subjects is something to be ashamed of. I should be down there with them. I should be them. Laughing and shrieking and striking banter with cute, sensitive boys. I should practice smiling for people and looking them in the eye, instead of wandering barefoot on concrete floors trying not to pass by the same people twice.
I am frowning as I come to the realization that I don’t know exactly who I am. The sun is setting when I learn that all that I am is a girl leaning over the railing, dragging my feet along the floor, and praying someone will bother to say ‘hi’. Someone is blowing bubbles down below as I discover that I am nothing that I have imagined myself to be. I am no universe with stars. I am no tree in fall. I am no god reviewing creation. I am no child with the intention to kill.
I am a girl, freshly out of juice, supporting myself on a paint-chipped railing and pulling my feet along the concrete floor, contemplating who I am.