Dear pretty girl. Before you subconsciously think I’m writing about you, please note, you're wrong. It is possible I’m referencing past experience, but don’t fret. I’m just writing about a girl dressed in a blue raincoat with red hair and blue eyes and mannerisms...I will decide because I’m the writer. Her figment takes up space I think somewhere between the heart and the synapse, and I can’t evict her, as if I don’t have a choice and she will stomp and curtsy where she pleases. She’s worth poetry and sleepless nights and the periodic Saturday rollick, which I will call a blog. The thing about writing about a girl in your head is that it may or may not mean anything. I will let you decide and only say rollicking is grand and so is writing, so I’ll let fingers do the walking.
I mentioned manner, and while I identify with Melvin Udall in As Good As It Gets, “I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability,” I have never written, per se, a woman. The thought is losing the “rollick”...but the girl in the blue raincoat is worth my brain space sometimes, particularly when she wants to be loved. Otherwise, it is better to think about teaching English and things to do in front of me.
You see, there is a wall. It can arise between anyone. It appears when no one knew it was there and then you can’t feel fingers doing any walking. You can’t hear any familiar voice. You don’t know if the other is there, and you don’t know...how to write a woman. I’m of the impression everyone can write something about someone. You’ve felt fingers grip yours. You know sarcasm when you hear it. You’ve loved and I think you can write. But you only sense the imperceptible wall that divides and puts the person in the raincoat on the other side, a wall in your head. A wall that’s imaginary and a girl in a blue raincoat that is you talking to you, a memory or muse. Where did that wall come from? Why can’t you hear me on the other side? Why can’t I feel you?
The girl in the blue raincoat maybe lives somewhere, and she may love wit and blue raincoats and a hand to hold her own. But she’s only a girl in a blue raincoat on the other side of a wall in the mind. I put her there. I wrote her too, and I expect not to hear her voice or feel her fingers...because I made the wall. She’s confined to this derisory attempt at writing a woman. And what if she walked up to me, and what if she wasn’t wearing a blue raincoat and never had? Who is she in front of me?
Am I also a man in a raincoat, with red hair and blue eyes on the other side of a wall in your brain? I watch you and think you’re pretty. Can our fingers to do the walking? Don’t imagine me. Please don’t put up walls. I can’t take them down. I can’t reach through. Can you hear me? I don’t want to be a talking raincoat man in your head. I want to be a person in front of you.
