![]() ![]() ![]() That only happened once and my parents didn’t believe me when I said it wasn’t for me. I spin around like I’ve been caught stealing food again. How different we are in the dark.Ī sudden rustle means my cellmate is awake. It never sees how its absence changes people. It’s like a negligent parent who only knows one half of who you are. Someone picked up the sun and pinned it to the sky again, but every day it hangs a little lower than the day before. The window tells me we’re not far from the mountains and definitely near the water, but everything is near the water these days. My parents emptied their pockets of me and left me to evaporate on a concrete slab. It’s like someone is emptying their pockets over the earth and doesn’t seem to care where the contents fall, doesn’t seem to care that the raindrops burst when they hit the ground, that they shatter when they fall to the floor, that people curse the days the drops dare to tap on their doors. I wonder about how they’re always falling down, tripping over their own feet, breaking their legs and forgetting their parachutes as they tumble right out of the sky toward an uncertain end. Raindrops are my only reminder that clouds have a heartbeat. Close my eyes to the sound of a soft pitter-patter rushing through the wind. I take a deep breath and tiptoe to the window only to press my nose against the cool surface. The room is heavy with the scent of wet stone, upturned soil the air is dank and earthy. My knees curled up to my chin, my arms wrapped tight around my small frame, my long brown hair the only curtain between us. I hear him turn over on the bed that used to be half mine. I hear his irritated exhalation of breath. I want to believe him I don’t believe him. He props himself up enough to see my face. “So you’re-what? Insane? Is that why you’re here?” I will never fight back because I’m too petrified too paralyzed too paranoid. I bite my lip and try to bury myself in the dark corner. Stretches out across the two mattresses, grabbing my pillow to fluff up under his neck. Uses his foot to push the two metal frames to his side of the room. He sizes up the meager pillow on the spare bed they shoved into the empty space this morning, the skimpy mattress and threadbare blanket hardly big enough to support his upper half. He laughs and I fall off my bed and scuttle into the corner. Dark blue eyes dark brown hair sharp jawline strong lean frame. His eyebrow is missing a ring they must’ve confiscated. His arms are tatted up, half sleeves to his elbows. To torture me, to torment me, to keep me from sleeping through the night ever again. He grins but he’s not smiling and I want to cry, my eyes desperate, terrified, darting toward the door I’d tried to open so many times I’d lost count. “And you’re a girl.” He cocks an eyebrow. I stifle my scream my urgency to run the crippling horror gripping my limbs. My eyes open to 2 eyes 2 lips 2 ears 2 eyebrows. I sit up on the cloth-covered springs I’m forced to sleep on. I roll my little notebook into a ball I shove into the wall. I practice using my voice, shaping my lips around the familiar words unfamiliar to my mouth. Talking to a real human being might make things easier. Abandon the effort it takes to write things down. I grab my nearly useless pen with the very little ink I’ve learned to ration each day and stare at it. We are both alone, both existing as the absence of something else. I press my palm to the small pane of glass and feel the cold clasp my hand in a familiar embrace. The only existence I know now is the one I was given. But I have very faint memories of that world. Our sun was always the right kind of light. There aren’t as many trees as there were before, is what the scientists say. The gust catches their withered wings only to force them downward, forgotten, left to be trampled by the soldiers stationed just below. A million leaves from a hundred different branches dip in the wind, fluttering with the false promise of flight. The sun drops into the ocean and splashes browns and reds and yellows and oranges into the world outside my window. I know my parents never bothered to say good-bye. I only know that I was transported by someone in a white van who drove 6 hours and 37 minutes to get me here. No one cares that I didn’t know what I was capable of. The same people who pulled me out of my parents’ home and locked me in an asylum for something outside of my control. The initiative that was supposed to help our dying society. They are the minions of The Reestablishment. ![]() “Another psycho just like you No more isolation,” they said to me. “We hope you rot to death in this place For good behavior,” they said to me. “You’re getting a cellmate roommate,” they said to me. 26 letters in an alphabet I haven’t spoken in 264 days of isolation.Ħ,336 hours since I’ve touched another human being. I have nothing but a small notebook and a broken pen and the numbers in my head to keep me company. ![]()
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