I think about water

a couple hundred patrons haunt the city's oldest screen: directorial debut of the vampire ingenue. she's written about childhood and the strings it pulls on how we try to grow. the film is a dagger to the senses: sharp sounds and shadows, glances from scary men to run from. fragments of memories, glimpses of beautiful bodies. blood in the shower and streams to which we always return. I think about water and how it runs in ways the harm and hurt we carry can't. shouting and tears over ashes poured into the sea. I sip the drink I didn't need and listen to the breathing in the dark. is it wrong to join the laughing when we want to fill the silence? how often am I watching someone else's trauma just for something else to do?

the second baby screams with questions I'll never leave alone. all born screaming; why were we ever woken up? the babies cry for answers: we feed pacifiers and hope that soon they'll leave the beast alone. at some point they forget or learn to look around the cloud that can't make sense or be escaped. we do our best to give them less to think about.

I wake to fill another day without screams or a path beyond the tramlines. an aching frame and want to believe in the illusion of chronology. rain on the glass and someone's wedding day. I am nothing more than here and now forever all at once.