the sunroof stole my hat
I have never before more than today wanted to die more than yesterday at the stake of a dropping hat. Perhaps when I was ten but way back then I never knew what the stakes were. What a dropping hat meant. And what a dropping hat meant to me then means nothing to me now and I would not have ever known such a definition as I do now.
The wind blew. A gust of wind so strong my eyelids fluttered about wildly. It felt strange, I’ve never had that sensation before but it was nothing I couldn’t appreciate. My brother knew what that felt like but for different reasons. And my mother thought she knew and it was a feeling my father insisted he created, the wind. And it blew. My hat which once fit snug upon my dome, my crown, the holder of my mind, became undone, unfolding every memory as my car kept moving on. After watching it tumble, dent, and roll, I sunk back in the sunroof closing the day. Never before have I lost a hat. I may have left them here and there. I may have given them to boys without fathers and girls without roofs but lost, I have not, until today.
My head felt cold. I was unused to the feeling of a breeze touching my scalp. Maybe I’ve blocked the blessing of thought through a newsboy cap for the sake of my fashion, which is to wear a hat. I must protect the whims that weren’t originally mine. I must protect the whims I love that are fleeting without my cap sat upon the tip top of my totem pole, my temple, my goodnight to soul you see before you see me. The unraveling was rather dramatic but that is a made up word like all words. First started my own thoughts, those thoughts that are not his or her thoughts but thoughts that are from the ways that are not his or her ways. Mine. Everything I considered about myself, which wasn’t much to begin with. Human. Here. Hat. The only one I packed on this trip. My favorite. But it is gone. I felt the cool traverse through the maze of my hair. Every follicle I forgot to count had been surrounded by truth. Rock me to sleep, I will not overheat. Something deep in me made me bite my lip hoping and wishing me to sweat through my sleep. Though that did not happen by will, my own. I have not felt it, the slick breeze, long before it was simply the way things were. Before it became just the way I felt.
Maybe that was the easiest to let go. I cannot turn around if I wanted to. This car has no driver and will not turn back. I’ve tried. I cried out from the back seat, tapping, pounding, and trying to smash the window I cannot see or see through. The windows don’t pass light. Inside is a void, it is endless. I feel the seat but it is only a seat because I believe it to be a seat. It is only a seat because I hope it is a seat. Everything in a car, we know the function for, we know the purpose for, the reason that it exists. Except for me. So I seek the sunroof. I could hear the wind rush through opening the top. The mechanic whir was hushed by the pressure of the pressure. It came in much louder than you’d suspect. Upon the first crack, the air kept me to my seat, kept me down but up and in awe at its power to keep me down before I stood tall. I extended my legs again to see the road ahead. To my surprise, twice, my eyes fluttered. This time in a way I remembered.
