Purple Mashed Potatoes
In-depth explanation of how broken shards of stained glass pieced together create a window for light to pass, and not much else.
Chapter I:
Riverside
Im sitting on a park bench. I feel well grounded. The wood is sturdy against the back, creating an illusion of stability in my still adolescent life. It doesn’t worry me that I’m failing school and have no idea where I’m going to college. It doesn’t worry me that I’m high more days out of the year than I am sober. Today I’m sober for a change. My head is clear.
Her bare legs are laying across my lap and the smooth skin of her thigh feels lovely on my fingertips, as I run them all over. My other hand is occupied with slightly tickling her neck. She has a silly spot around her third vertebrae on the right side of a cute beauty mark down the middle of her spine. My nails barely come to contact and it makes her tingle and tell me to stop as she ticklishly laughs. Her curls are brushing against my face. They have this fascinating texture. I used to sneak behind her years ago and play with it. She would let me. I didn’t know she was self conscious about her natural hair back then. I’ve never seen or touched hair like hers before. They’re brushing against my face in conjunction with the river breeze. I close my eyes and memorize this sensation. Deep down inside I knew there will be moments in my life when I will recall this for comfort. I was right. I have relived this instant many times in my memory for half a decade since.
We talked about an hour or so before we decided the moon and city lights reflecting off the Hudson water were equally as enjoyable. The silence wasn’t awkward and feeling the vibration of her chest as she occasionally broke it with a subtle song was making me happy. She has a great memory. She wants to go to a karaoke but, I don’t know how to sing and refrain from going. Five years later I’ll be singing her Russian lullabies to calm her anxiety so she can sleep. I also don’t want to tell her that I love her at that moment. It’s the right moment to say it. I just don’t. I’m making a mistake and not realizing it. I can’t possibly understand it at the moment. We do not recognize the loss of opportunity until we’re waving it farewell off the docks of regret.
Chapter II:
ESL
We speak to one another in our native tongues for entertainment. We laugh and find it amusing to hear what each one of us has to say without understanding. She says something to me in Spanish with a serious face. I felt every meaning she could have possibly conveyed. She refuses to translate and keeps walking. I think it sounded like “I think I’m falling for you”. But, it also sounded very much like “you’re an idiot and I will leave you soon”. I think she meant a little bit of both. I put her back against a brick wall and told her I love her in Russian. I think she understood. I asked her a final time what the last thing she said was. She just gave me a kiss. “You’ll find out one day”. I spoke to her in English for the rest of the night.
It’s a late summer night and we’re cuddled on the train together on the way back home. I ate too much papaya just like I overindulge with everything in life. It made my stomach very upset and I’m feeling sick, but trying my best not to show it. Projecting my insecurities of appearing anything but perfect to her. I’m too deep in the abyss to be looking for a ladder.
Не пробуждай, не пробуждай
Моих безумств и исступлений,
И мимолетных сновидений
Не возвращай, не возвращай!
Не повторяй мне имя той,
Которой память - мука жизни,
Как на чужбине песнь отчизны
Изгнаннику земли родной.
Не воскрешай, не воскрешай,
Меня забывшие напасти,
Дай отдохнуть тревогам страсти
И ран живых не раздражай.
Иль нет! Сорви покров долой!..
мне легче горя своеволье,
Чем ложное холоднокровие,
Чем мой обманчивый покой.
-Денис Давыдов
1834
-Илья Трофименко
почувствовал
2014-2018
Chapter III:
Comfort Food
The sun has set already and the farm stand has been packed. We get to keep what we don’t sell so it doesn’t go to waste. We only vendor fresh produce. A chefs dream. I hid the lucrative purple potatoes from the customers so that I can make her mashed potatoes out of something purple. I don’t know why I’m so excited, especially after walking miles to her house with a bag full of them. A little garlic for the kick, a little cream for texture. A skirt steak to pair with and I have one happy girl munching down across the table from me. I know shes satisfied. Last time I got her food she didn’t like the breading on the calamari that I walked to her house. Maybe because I also brought a sick girl flowers that shes allergic to. I’m glad I made it up to her. She appreciates everything I do I just don’t notice it. I’m so focused on the pigment of the potatoes I don’t realize this is the time to say it. Those magic words. I leave her house again without telling her my intent. I didn’t cook them because they were purple. I don’t even care that they’re purple. I did it because I love you. You know it, but you need to hear it from me.
Chapter IV:
Intuition
Sometimes you know. Our bodies have a very good balance of having underwent millions of years of biological evolution, and eons of spiritual experience of the self aware humanity. Those bus doors closed and the last thing she said was “see you later”. I won’t see her again for five years. I sat on the bench for what seemed like an hour. My mind was blank and void of activity. The reality of the situation has not yet caught up to my intuition. The bench didn’t feel as firm on my back as it did earlier that summer. A lot of change was coming, but I will choose to swim upstream instead.
Chapter V:
Skeptic
She reads my fortune. It is accurate, but vague within my understanding. The things she says can pertain to anyone’s life as long as we make the appropriate connections. Every broad statement can become very personal if one chooses to believe their fate is in a deck of paper cards. She tells me that I will reunite and fall in love with someone from my past. We both don’t see her name written on that card. To this day I don’t know or recollect what pushed me to asking her to meet me in Thailand. I just remember being pushed. It was an external force of supernatural beginnings pushing me towards an equally divine source of energy. A month later I am laying down holding her hand getting the word fortuna tattooed across my stomach. The name of the vessel thats surviving a kraken attack as the tentacles are dragging it into the darkness of my blacked out navel. Whether fortune is what truly gets me through the storm, or the skilled sailors of rough seas, we’re in dire need of both when fighting off a mythical creature. Home is where I want to be and shes my temple.
Chapter VI:
Stained glass shards
Every individual moment in my life has been a broken piece of glass. It has the potential to contain a sharp memory that can cut me as deep as my carelessness will let it. It’s stained in the color that I choose it to be.
Chapter VII:
The window
If all the shards are the same color there will be no picture. If all of them are shades of dark, no light shall pass. If all of them are shades of white the light will hurt the eyes. Each shard has to be the precise color that it is in order to create a depiction that you choose. It doesn’t matter what the depiction is however. It is the light that passes that will warm your soul that does.
But, my window will probably be purple.