Wednesday, 1 May 2013

Welcome Strangers, Legends, Martyrs, Painters, Pipers, Prisoners


“I’ll be the girl who can’t be moved,” she said, adamantly. Then we laughed and I tried to bribe her. I told her I’d buy the dress. She got up immediately, and we left. “You only want to see me in the dress because it’s skanky,” I laughed. We laughed. Then we played in the video game arcade, and half an hour later, it was time to leave.

Two days later we talked on the phone. I wasn’t sure, I told her, about where I should start. I was confused. I really didn’t know where to start, at the beginning or at the end. We were talking about my paintings. “It was funny wasn’t it, when that woman was all, beta, are you done with the machine, and some other guy had already taken it?” Ten minutes later we were talking about two days ago. I watched the fan spin around and round on the ceiling, from the ceiling, really soon, with the ceiling. It seemed to slow down.

Suddenly I felt like screaming, tearing the roof down with the ceiling, because of my screaming. The hands on the clock seemed to slow down. I felt like the painting on the walls weren’t my own. The voice that was talking now, echoing in my room, was not my own. The friend on the other end of the line, was not my friend. All of it belonged to someone else.

“I’m sorry. I … tuned out, I think.”

I put down the phone in what felt, suddenly, like despair.




This is where I sort of left off, once, very long ago, and here I shall resume, because it is time.

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