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Ramblings of the listless |
I woke up feeling as though something had changed and was surprised to find that there was no window to the right side of my bed, but on the left instead, and I couldn't believe that I wasn't angry at someone so horrible, but was overwhelmed by a sense of empathy instead, even though he didn't feel bad and made it clear. And there was a song on the radio I hadn't heard in years and his lips were moving to the lyrics, but no sound came out and I thought my lips were like that too, chapped from winter and dehydrated from a lack of water. We communicated through a sign language of our own and I begged him to let me stay, even though his eyes told me it was time to go, I wanted to make him say it, just so I could see the frustration on his face and know that he was a human and did have feelings other than despondency. Time slipped backwards through a wormhole; I was in another bed and there was another him and there was a window on the right side and a song I'd known all my life on the radio and he spoke to me but the white noise drowned him out and we didn't have a sign language of our own so my chest caved in under the weight of realizing the things I'd never know. I felt bad for everyone I'd ever met, even though they seemed happier than me, it was a quiet contentment that I couldn't understand. The understated way they held their heads higher than I'd ever dare and hugged each other from behind at the kitchen sink or spat sunflower seeds on the front porch watching the storms rolled over the wheat fields. And I started a letter of apology, an internal rage of envy that cultivated crops of sadness over porches I'd never sit on and turned into a list of things I'd never understand, no matter how long I watched them dust the mantle, I had raced myself to the stairwell, but I couldn't find the crawlspace. |