‘Running in Circles’, by Sophia Lucia

I had never seen a perfect circle until grandpa’s nickel coated silver dollar. He kept it in the centre of his palm, which had sunk in from the pressure like a tired couch. I never wanted to touch it. I barely wanted to look at it. It left a green tint in the middle of the hand, perfectly shaped, perfectly gnawed. I don’t recall him ever applying any sort of ointment on it but I always thought Cortisone might help. Or not. Birthmarks are sometimes invited guests.

Grandpa grimaced most of the time. He was also tender, at times. 

I have never found myself sleepier than the day grandpa asked me for a favour and I said of course grandpa and he said take this dollar and hold it for me and I said how long and then he handed it to me. I went home and I did everything I meant to do (the laundry, putting away dry dishes, matching black socks to the right black socks, setting things down and then forgetting where I set them, et al.) but somehow it all took double the time and before I knew it, I was passed out on the bathroom floor. The heater is located directly below it and makes the floor a gateway drug to fanciful dreams. I keep a notebook with me whenever catnapping in the lavatory.

The way I see it all is this:

There was a beach and rocks and crawfish and catfish and the sun and lawn chairs with fat pale roundies oozing in their summer strings and wetted brows. They smelled of meat. But I digress. The rocks. The rocks wanted desperately to be the fine, silky seduction that was the sand beneath blankets and between toes. How omniscient, thought rock. How everywhere it could all be. Here I am, a lump. Not even smoothed edges, not close enough to mother tidying her bed. I am a fucking lump, thought rock. Tell me how to be the beach. I don’t want to be atop. I want to be grains galore. Patience, said sand grains. We’ll be brothers yet, just a couple million more years.

My palm developed an incessant itch that could not be itched. The itch was a powerful force, and I wanted to talk to it and tell it to lay off. But one cannot reckon with an itch. So I reconciled instead. I’d keep my ill-fated arm behind my back and pretend we were strangers, and I was merely empathising. Empathising like the dickens. But alas this was my shaking hand and I met an awful lot of people in my life and to offer the other hand to shake may as well just be saying not to meet me at all.

Grandpa told me not to do anything he wouldn’t do. I said really, Paw Paw? Grandpa didn’t do much of anything at all. I was so young and full of ideas and wonder. I wanted to learn to dance salsa and eat butter cookies and stay up so late I didn’t have my wits about me for the next day. I wanted to see Guinea-Bissau and Mount Vesuvius before I died.  I wanted a gym membership.

So I went and sat next to Paw Paw on the couch and shouted YOU CALL THAT A SPIN and JUST SOLVE IT, YOU GREEDY ASSHOLE at the TV when Wheel of Fortune came on. I ate dry chicken and a mush that was once a carrot and I took all sorts of different coloured pills that reminded me of the candies that did not go unmissed after supper. I combed through proverbial wiry whiskers with untrimmed yellowing nails, ragged at the rims. I fell asleep sitting up and let drool slither down my side. I let Maw Maw change my clothes and put me to bed. I did not say thank you.

I cheated one day. I looked at the nickel coated silver dollar and I said, why? Silver is golden and would feel like a million dollars. Nickel is a cheap bitch and I’m sick of accompanying myself with all this green eye shadow and emerald medallions. I found a quarter behind my dresser and I began to scrape, like a lottery ticket. Looking for an upgrade, a simple pleasure. But it was to no avail. The nickel had fallen asleep on the bed, and now this was its home. Round and round, I will take care of this child. How heavy responsibility can hang. I never even wanted a dog.

Sophia Lucia is an experimental musician, performer, and writer. She is based out of Chicago & Paris. She makes conversational and surrealistic Punk-Cabaret/Rock & Roll/ Alternative Americana music. She writes and produces a one-woman show titled, ‘Freak Show Cabaret!’ which is a variety show including (but not limited to) theatre, poetry, burlesque, performance art, improvisation, and original music.