UNDULATIONS IN THE RENAISSANCE

By Ariana Duckett

With lyrics incorporated from "Dayglow" by Fuzzybrain

I.
Pretty please
Where do I begin?
Oh, I don't understand it either
And I don't think I can
Fuzzybrain call it what you want
I've felt so distant lately as if I were not

I live in a small liberal arts college campus and it is autumn. My classes are not too difficult, nor do they engage me. I’m not sure where I go after my classes end, just that I find myself surrounded by redwoods that pierce the sky, threatening to conquer it. I am far away from home and the days end sooner and the nights are more intimidating, menacing. It takes extra effort to get out of bed while it is dark, and I think of my friends back home. Burnt orange sweaters and red cheeks and white rooftops. Whose memories are these?

II.
There's rain outside, steady winter
My heart feels like such a mixture
Shapeless, I stare at her picture
I don't know her, but I miss her
Why, oh why such things?

The nights are quieter and friendships are more intimate, concrete. I wonder how everyone else is doing, and I daydream much more. I think about Christmas, and the end, and the special places that I share with special people. When it comes to old friendships, I am a flower girl: the silky memories of my old flings and frivolous choices scatter in my shadow, hidden from the new crowd around me. Back then, it was easier to make me smile; I seemed to hold a fragment of everyone around me in my soul. There was the girl I fell in love with, the boy who fell in love with me, and the boy I dated, all of which have nearly forgotten me. I see their pictures and I see the scattered petals, the remains of a garden I no longer visit, that has been flooded by my ‘else’: the myriad of distractions I find caked around my new environment. An alien horizon I can’t navigate, and a cleansing rainfall I can’t make stay. I used to miss my friends; now I miss my classes. But don’t I love them?

I wonder who I’ve locked gazes with in the past 24 hours, if they will also become integrated parts of my soul. The colors grow warmer while the nights grow colder. We decline to do many things now; reading outside, swimming, talking too loudly. We were so busy making all our mistakes during the summer that there is nothing left to do now other than talk about the spring, which we are pretty sure is coming someday. We debate convoluted topics and long for home.

There is too much rain to nurture the gardens; now it just kills everything, slowly, almost beautifully.

III.
Write it down absent of the pen
The sun has been set for hours and she's rising again
Scattered mind, I call it a friend
I wish I thought a bit less and spoke up instead
In my head

Long drives, shivering, snow. You ask me how I’m doing, and I smile and say I’m fine, and my cheeks stay dry. I think you’re flirting with me. I think you’ll use my honesty against me. Gentle music, quiet questions. We have no childhoods anymore. Let’s hug tight, until the snow covers our arms and we become snow angels. Let’s discuss old habits and new myths. The sun is not up yet, and we have time to dissect the stars and sprinkle them on our birthday cakes. The night laps up yesterday’s worries, and everything is rhapsodic, unending. This is why I keep a tissue in my pocket - not to touch against my tears, but to annotate my romances, with the snow and the sun and the silhouettes. The silhouettes alter: everyone looks different in the variant light of truth, and it will trick you if you don’t pay close enough attention. The hero of the night might turn into the morning’s mourning villain. You will feel the sorrow I have felt, and you will need it to get through the renaissance.
​
IV.
There's rain inside my skeleton frame
​A hurricane within my rib cage
I never left but I never stayed
I'm cleaning out the fuzz in my brain
Time and time again

Coffee fixes nothing except smiles on our faces, but we already knew that. Slow dance. String lights. Soft romance, no louder than the falling leaves. I never did anything right, so I hope you’ll forgive me. Shake your head. Try again.

She’s in love with you.

What do you remember from your time with her? Surely her smile, surely not her side-eye. I wish I remembered her better, but we could not call ourselves a duo of the night until the end, when everything grew crucial and immediate, and we could decline each other’s presence no more.
​
I talk about my past-love, and you talk about your new-love, and it empties us of our souls. Milky fairy light, like what we tried to string on our ceiling. Homework unfinished. They would be ours if we were not ourselves. But we can be each other to each other for each other, unabridged children from colorful homes in different oases.

V.
I never left but I never stayed
I'm cleaning out the fuzz in my brain
Time and time again
Oh, it's time and time again

Waffles and smiles and dissatisfying answers. One AM, before anyone can understand what’s going on, but after the protection of our regular lives has gone home. You tell me something, and I struggle to hear what you’re saying, because the air is thick and you hesitate to be honest.

They finally got together, you inform me. Two hummingbirds conquering the night in their shimmery-teal armor, and have survived into the morning, and have accepted each other’s truths. You always see them together, humming the same songs. Can we share earbuds? So that you can listen to my thoughts. Piece through my rubble. Find a child cowering in a half-destroyed closet. A closet in a garden in a thunderstorm in the nighttime. It’s happening again, and childhood is seeping back into the cracks of our redwood-protected campus-kingdom. You’ve learned nothing at all.

VI.
I’ve learned nothing at all.

---

Ariana Duckett is a British-born writer and editor studying creative writing in Southern California. She has been published in Lunch Ticket, Rainbow Poems, and Manuscription Magazine, was a poetry editor for Wingless Dreamer Publisher and is a current staff writer for Fulminare Review. Her other interests include astronomy, listening to music and ice skating.

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