I Am a Cottonball Conundrum

Once upon my reincarnation, I understood that I was a cottonball. I would have preferred to have been something a tad more majestic like the wind or a tree or a cloud or even pollen. But instead my soul went pummeling into the puffy absorbent form we all know and see as the cottonball. It didn’t bother me too much since I had passed away and my mother had purchased a bag of me at the market to use to remove the nail polish off her fingernails. If I knew my mother well enough, she would definitely be using me for her nails. For the sake of all things small, round, puffy, white and insignificant, I was a happy puffy. I was happy to be back with my family again after having been in an indeterminate state for as long as I could remember. I was placed on my mother’s dressing table in her room. I was cozy because I was amongst her belongings. I belonged to her again. I could see myself in the mirror of her dresser as I began to recollect how I had wanted so much to be a cottonball last Halloween. I couldn’t celebrate Halloween because I was sinking into a deep puddle of work. So many things to do, it almost felt like the work was intangible. I couldn’t touch it; I couldn’t finish it. But, I am a cottonball that enjoys exaggerations. I always was, a person, who enjoyed exaggerations.

By the time I was acquired and taken home, everyone had seemed to have dealt with my unhappy casualty. Afterthought: I am also a cottonball that thinks the word ‘casualty’ better defines the word ‘death’ because it begins with the word casual and casual things seem to be accepted more casually and without difficulty. Seeing that my mother had moved on, I couldn’t help but think to myself whether or not I should approach her, most importantly, whether or not I ‘could’ approach her. I tried to nudge myself against the other cottonballs in the plastic bag I now called home to get some sort of attention but I was inanimate. I was an inanimate thing that was also an emotional wreck but I was unable to move a single fiber in my cottony… anatomy? Structure? Arrangement? I’ll settle with arrangement.

I had come to realize that my plastic container-surrounding thing was my new home within my old home because I was lucky enough to be bought by my mother. How weird my new life is. Now I am stuck here, rubbing off against other cottonballs who, might I add, don’t seem to like me. In fact they kind of sound like the New Yorkers on television who constantly like to yell at each other about watching where the other person is going, only cottonballs keep nudging not going. I’ve always wanted to go to New York City but still be close to my mother. I guess this is a combination of the things I really wanted to do in my life before I died… only now, most of it is stuffed in a plastic bag. Being a cottonball for Halloween is now what I am for another lifetime. An impression I have of New York is now living in the bag as my mother ‘casually’ falls into a deep sleep in the bed right across me as the television is on.