Sparks- 250 words

Pain drips a cross my clavicle, behind my left ankle, up and down my arms and the side of my belly when you make me laugh, calf muscles and thigh muscles, they wanna snap with the effort of standing and sitting, walking up or down the steps.

I grabbed the side of the tub and the edge of the sink. I’m flashed back to the electricity that ran through me as I grabbed the edge of the sink and the stove to launch myself up onto the countertop for cereal in the morning so many years ago. It was the hum across the clavicle that told me I belonged to that place. 

When the neighborhood kids got ice cream from the truck after dinner, I pulled the 9-volt from my walking baby doll and licked it until my tongue hums. The metallic taste became my favorite flavor.

“Why would you do that!” someone asks. 

Because it made me feel alive. Electricity coursed through me and sewed me like a patch into the fabric of the Earth when I didn’t belong anywhere else. 

Electricity begged me to come back to it for years. 

“That boy is no good for you. Come back to me. Notice me” The brand new copier inexplicably breaking down in my presence.  

“You are heading in the wrong direction” The summer I went through cars like tic-tacs.

The electrical fire at the diner while I reminisced over coffee about her.  

She is a good friend to me.