in the rain

for dinner we cook pasta in the same way I used to when I lived in the hotel. when the lounge is free we drink tea and watch a movie about the future. everything is red or beige and reading is a crime. the firemen burn the books they find while everybody else stays home. they spend all day on the couch watching strangers on the screen who they call family. a woman is found with a library behind her wall. she refuses to leave and so we watch her burn atop the pile of paperbacks. I think of what they taught me about the war and how they burnt the books in the street. when she falls to the ground her hand reaches out and I see the boy from the clip on my phone who couldn’t escape the flames. the woman in the film didn’t want to see a world without her books. the boy on my phone had no choice in living - he was bound to a hospital bed after narrowly surviving another attack. but they both lost their lives to fire. she lived in a world of people so afraid of stories that they burned them. we live in a world that does the same.

I don’t dream and wish I did. at my desk I slip between the tasks and the stories we don’t want to hear. I read the updates as they come through on another tab in a steady flow that never stops. my housemate cries because she left her washing in the rain.