j.k. armstrong

I don’t know why I brought it to school in the first place, or, I mean, why I brought it with me anywhere at all. It’s an object reserved for children, for school teachers, for stenciling the outline of dead bodies. It’s in my pocket. The pocket of my jacket near my chest, near my heart. I’m afraid of breaking it, so that’s where it is. I think a friend of mine gave it to me for my birthday. It’s one of the most important things I have with me, even more important than my jacket, which is trying to protect me from an extreme cold and a flurry of snow. The object is protecting me from something far more dangerous.

Chalk. When I was younger, I wrote something on a driveway that got me in trouble. It was something about self-loathing that a six or seven year old shouldn’t be writing, even in chalk, and I don’t know why I did, or why I denied it when my brother told our mom. I quickly switched to doing childish things, like seeing who could draw the straightest line, just to pretend I hadn’t, or forget that I had, written anything at all. Later, I’d try to write inspiring messages for people on random city surfaces. A particular brick on some building, on the curb beneath the parking meter, or on the bottoms of napkin dispensers. The rain would come and it would disappear, and it wouldn’t matter to me because I think it made me feel all right, the idea that a small phrase could help someone out. It wasn’t spray paint, it wasn’t permanent, it wasn’t elaborate or beautiful, but it was good enough.

I have something bigger in mind now. Outside, the air bites sharply into my exposed skin. A Midwestern winter trying to eat my alive. I run, my feet making the first tracks in the newly fallen snow, my exhalations crystallizing so that I can see my panic, my desperate need to get something off my mind and onto concrete. My coat, my hood, and my jeans try to keep me safe from the weather, while the chalk tries to keep me safe from myself.

The bridge is barely three strides long, and uselessly positioned over a dry patch of land, the lake a few yards away hopelessly reaching out toward it. The trees around me sway softly, creaking gently as they crane their heads to try and see what I’m doing. I kneel in the snow, the meltwater seeps into the denim of my pants and stinging my knees, the concrete feels sharper than normal as my bare hands wipe snow off the surface and grab the piece of chalk from its hidden resting place.

I write. I write and I cry and I try to be honest, but I’m making it it all up as I go. Most everything I write is a lie, but I’m only trying to get across my personal emotions without providing a personal narrative. Enough truth and enough lie to keep me safe and sane. I’m afraid the chalk will break, or that I’ll run out of it before my final word is written. The concrete is rough, and eats away greedily at the soft skeleton in my hand.

Is this what we expected?
Writing on rocks by the beach,
too cold to speak or love or dance
like we danced in your basement,
forgetting for a moment
the reasons we emptied the
bottles in your parents’ cabinet.
I don’t feel you anymore,
the winter has made me numb
and my knees are bleeding.
You remind me of summer.

My knees are bleeding and my hands are numb, to the point where any sort of warmth feels like thorns breaking through my skin, painful and harsh. My jeans are soaked and my palms and knees hurt from the pavement. I stand abruptly and run, leaving my feelings behind for the snow to swallow and bury and hide until spring, when the melted slush and children’s feet will wash it away forever.

I run back to school, which wasn’t very far away, and up the stairs into the library, soaked and bleeding and still crying, to sit on a chair and close my eyes and listen to old Simon and Garfunkel records and forget. The chalk is still in my burning hands, even as the words slip from my head, dripping down to the carpet like the melting snow still clinging to my legs.

It isn’t spray paint, and it isn’t permanent. It isn’t elaborate or beautiful, but it’s enough. I wrote it on a bridge; I want to get over it.

I wrote this when I was 16 and also took the photo when I was 16.