7/30

I am standing somewhere on the campus of Iowa University remembering all my failures as a sixteen old. I
wanted to be a creative writing major like Jaswinder Bolina, but at sixteen I rejected letters A through F and numbers 1-36. I believed it would be the only defining moment in my life. I preferred playing kick ball though and did nothing, but taunt geese in the middle of fucking winter around Lake Arlington. It would be
Neal's birthday, the pinnacle age, where he smoked his first cigar and I understood nothing about my friends-- only that we became the assholes we always made fun of on Tarkington's playground. I never really liked woodchips, but I stayed for Adam's elephant jokes.
I started calling my mother Linda at sixteen too. There was something always sad about that. I thought I was unconventional in school, because I never took a foreign language and the only AP class I'd ever take was Art with Ms. Silver. I was snarky in her eyes. She was just too sensitive and useless to those bad art students. I had a filing cabinet as a locker then too, but it would be in that hallway, on the way to art class, where I would
fall
in love a green-eyed monster who would later tell me during
our circus break-up I'd always be forgiven because I had a nice ass. I still
remember the very first time he fingered me in his basement. Like fireworks or something ocean-like. I still remember the many more times,
years later. Depending on how you look at it there are either six or seven states that divide us now. With Speed Racer in the background I write letters to him in college, because
I'm still not very over-it. I'll probably never admit it to his face that he's one of my best friends. Not because
I'm scared, but because I'm anxious. It's all kind of stupid anyway. Sometimes I wonder why I ever bothered stopping on the campus of Iowa University taunting geese in front of youths who didn't give a shit what it meant to stand on top of Lake Michigan or roof toasters or dance like dinosaurs at VFW's.

-sonja lynn mata