Compass

A vignette

My mother has always and will forever have a terrible sense of direction. The compass rose is irrelevant in her world; north may as well be the same thing as south, east, and west. I always thought of myself having a better sense of direction of up and down than her (frankly, it’s not hard).

 

But I get lost a lot. I am never sure which way to turn or what decision to make. My world spins at a constant rate of chaos.

 

It’s like staring out into the ocean, an endless mass of blue with a wind stronger than my will and too many currents pulling me in too many directions. The sight was so small it could fit inside a shell, and when put up to your ear, the vision of blue would whisper quietly into your ear, telling you the secrets of the souls that rest there. It seemed so easy to get lost in such a field of azure.

 

I once got lost in a pair of blue eyes. They were hidden in a cavern of deep-set features and a smile that was almost too hard to conceal. The lump in my throat faded and a new one appeared out of the butterflies that had gotten caught in my lungs and the small koi fish that was swimming too fast in my stomach.

 

I got lost in his deep conversations that made my sorrows sink and drown away. And his waves pulled me in so fast that I was afraid of losing myself.

 

But I wasn’t. Instead I found a different side of myself that was a type of happy I hadn’t felt in a while. It was one that caught herself smiling for no reason when it was late at night and her tired eyes were starting to fall but she stopped them before they did; and it was a side that made her dance more than she normally would to a Taylor Swift song. It was the happy side of her that made her grin the biggest and one that made her write cryptic stories and narratives in the words of metaphors.

 

And I knew that I was slowly losing my chance. The seconds, minutes, hours that we could just let words flow from us were grains of sand slipping through my fingers.

 

It’s scary how far a current can pull a person away, how pathetic that a school girl could get so lost in a pair a pair of blue eyes, and how funny that he was a ripple in my world that swept me so far from shore.

 

It’s funny how misaligned my compass had just become. Had I traveled too far in the wrong direction? My compass had led me into a trap that was a pair of blue eyes that compete against my black coffee ones.  I had traveled down a current where I thought his cockiness was cute and his imperfections were just overly perfect, where his bubbling personality always shined through a timid smile.

 

And it’s ironic that I write words about a field of azure so crystal when I knew it would eventually fade away to a blur of gray. This tide of imagery will not, or rather cannot, forever be an ocean when he and the world are so much more than that.

 

I am a hurricane that whips and lashes out with my sharp teeth, and my anger burns like the fire that is his determination. I am that storm that cleanses and renews and puts a hole through the roof. And he is the rainbow that follows behind me and aims to make the world calm again.

Maybe I do have my mother’s sense of direction after all. I hate to admit I got lost, but I did so, so easily.

 

But I never lost myself. I never lost my favorite song, or my favorite colors, or my favorite people. I am still the girl that laughs at her own jokes and even harder at a horrible pun. I am still the girl that never knows when that timid smile is just making a joke, and brushes away any real motive or deeper intention of his like the dried sand and salty ocean air stuck to my skin.

I will always be the girl that never loses herself.

 

Even if I get lost in a pair of blue eyes. 

Reviews

[Shiv]

Really enjoyed this piece. Love your metaphor; especially this one:

I once got lost in a pair of blue eyes. They were hidden in a cavern of deep-set features and a smile that was almost too hard to conceal. The lump in my throat faded and a new one appeared out of the butterflies that had gotten caught in my lungs and the small koi fish that was swimming too fast in my stomach.

My stylistic suggestion for improvement would be to play around with word order a bit more so that you don't have too many sentences starting with 'I....' and 'It's _____ that/how...'