Romanticism
by Tanner Armatis
“Sometimes when I’m by myself, I feel like paper. Cut down and manufactured. My arms and legs weigh me down lazily like obstructions in a drawing. The way my back arcs encourages my anxiety.
“I’ll start to think of my bones. How high I am in this apartment. Thirty feet up and held only by broken wood and bent nails.
“What if someone knocks on my door? Should I call out to them and ask who’s there? A meteor could fall and kill me. The apartment could light on fire. The cops could be called. What would I do? Who would save me?
“And a step would penetrate my hearing. One-eighty and I’ll stare at the locked door, waiting to see if the deadbolt turns.
“How loud is your breathing? Mine keeps up me at night. In moments like these, my nostrils feel like home-speakers.
“It never goes away though. I’ll always end up, outside, sitting on my broken green chair on the balcony. The wild things outside bring me great peace while they trample and shout, as if I’m watching my family.
“I like to people-watch too. I’ll admit it. Who cares? Everybody takes interest in people’s lives, no matter who they are. And the boys and girls, mothers and fathers, boyfriends and girlfriends, who lived in the rooms all around me at Sycamore were the most eclectic sort of people. So many nobodies and somebodies. Hard to tell a difference now.
“And I like watching all the people come home from work and relief is fresh on their face. So many people walk their dogs at five. The randoms boast their dogs around like trophies like they’re proud of their work. But they always look so damn happy. What a change when routine becomes tradition.
“Then I get hopeful.
“I’ll stand up and hold the steel rail. The lingering sounds of summer play a game of Eye-Spy with me. The apartment people and their pets are peculiar; however, I prefer a pretty sky. Not a cloudy one. Humans start to bore me and the sunset-struck sky always puts a spell on me.
“So many nights I’ve spent outside, looking at that sky, I know what color and where Andromeda is. I can spot Mars, Lacerta, and I witnessed the Perseids shower.
“Their tiny twinkles shock me. They are millions of thousands of hundreds of miles away and I saw that. How? Their sizes are incomprehensible. One day the Sun will fall, so what of me?
“Even the shutter between red and blue, the colors helicopters and airplanes make, scare me. The aviation and all its occupants are at the mercy of the ether. The thought of dying in a plane crash releases thousands of goosebumps over my legs, arms, and across my neck.
“And from the might of the galaxy, my fear will rise infinitely. The quiet thump of my heartbeat feels like a distress signal, and the universe tunes in.
“They tell me how little I am. What they can do. How little I can do. How small my reality, dreams and pride are. No master or slave complex here because it’s not a matter of competition, it’s a matter of fact.
“I’ll spiral back down at the pop of an exhaust or the squeal from a set of brakes.
“Someone is working on their car. A young lady walks her wiener dog.
“And Mars would shimmer again and I saw he never left. He was always there. The Moon too. The stars shift but they always come back, one way or another. And so do these people. It’s these little moments of pure clarity, where I become aware of everything, and it will terrify and tear me down until I’m come here to this one moment, again and again.
“It’s these times, my friends, when I am trapped under all this weight, I have to find a way out.”
Tanner Armatis will finish his bachelor's degree in English and English Education at Colorado State University. His nonfiction work has been published by Howling Mad Review. Tanner Armatis also held an internship as a reader at the North American Review.
