we don’t know each other, but you live in my building, i know because you’re the lady with the umbrella. it has ladybugs on it, and it’s one of those smaller ones you can tuck into your coat. you’re the lady with the umbrella, and when i can’t sleep at night i create versions of you.
VERSION 1: you got that umbrella from your mother who’s dead. i hoist this tragedy on you because of my mother, who isn’t dead, but i feel like the softer version of her was killed off, because it helps to logic her shortcomings. it is trauma, it is the fact that she wasn’t loved, not that she means to be unkind. you, unlike my mother, have a good relationship. the ladybugs are traveling with you because you and your mother would play hide and seek in the forests, and in the springs a ladybug would always latch onto you.
VERSION 2: you got that umbrella from a thrift store. in this version i try to find pieces of myself in you, that loneliness, the way you have to name things, then they are known. then they are loved. you you the umbrella from a thrift store on a thursday and unlike me, you are not crippled by small talk. you are as quiet, but you’re a better artist than i , your work emboldens. when people describe you they say “she owns her space,” as opposed to me that has been told “you’re like a wounded animal in a cage, asking which way you should sit, so someone will touch you.”
VERSION 3: you got that umbrella from someone that you love. this person that loves you, you have been together since you were children, now you spend your sunday mornings tracing the laughter lines that weren’t there the first time. you’re the lady with the umbrella in your neighborhood. it’s a running joke, once a year you host an “umbrella party.” your friend, sasha carries her umbrella in every house she moves to. you are well off, and you’re an only child who had playground friends that feel just like siblings.
VERSION 4: you stole that umbrella. you’re like me in that way, not in that i steal, but in that you’re smart, charming. no one knows you took that umbrella. your friends don’t know that you drink more often than you tell anyone. you fell out of love recently, it’s been quiet.. the sadness creeps in between the spaces of your bath, it doesn’t wash down the drain with your hair. you go to work, a job which is, a job. you’re kind, and never loud (expect when you let someone fuck you, because you know you’ll never let them hear you again). you’re the women with the umbrella, the girl that was left the first time, and never really knew anything else. that abandonment morphed with you, it takes shapes of people you loved, that you will love. you are me and i am you, and in your version of me, what does the lady with the umbrella do?
𝟎𝟑 — 𝐋𝐀𝐃𝐘 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐔𝐌𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐀 (11. 3. 25)