About You.

I got a sunburn waiting for you to land.

Squinting into the sun, I try to make out its precise colour. Yellow? No, orange turning red. I look away and close my eyes, tight, watching a red ghost sun dance in the darkness.

Standing on the dry, cracked asphalt of the tarmac, I wonder how it could be that the sky didn’t try to keep you forever. How could it let you land?

I notice that big chunk of metal glinting in the sunlight while it’s still miles away. You’re on there somewhere.

After your little white plane taxis to a halt, I wait anxiously until I see you step onto the stairs. You smile and wave in my direction.

You don’t know how crazy I am.

About you.

Inaction breeds inaction.

There's this peculiar way the sky meets lake, melding one blue into another, that makes me think of you. Two blues. Too blue. I think back to that time in your mother's living room. You were the prettiest girl I ever knew. I'd have stuck around if I thought I could treat you any good.

I sit alone, surrounded by all this shit I've collected over the years. Slipping on an old Floyd record, there's something in the hissing and popping that reminds me of you. I think back to the day of your first wedding - the one your groom didn't show up to. You were the prettiest bride I ever knew. I'd have stuck around if I thought I could treat you any good.

Thin walls, apartment walls, and a building full of ghosts. The discord always translates into memories of you - the day I met your lovely children. You were the prettiest mother I ever knew. I'd have stuck around if I thought I could treat you any good.

Anymore, my phone doesn't ring much. And to be honest, since that call ten years ago I haven't liked the sound of a ringing phone too much. I was on the next plane, you know. You cried and I listened. You were the prettiest widow I ever knew. I'd have stuck around if I thought I could treat you any good.

There's this peculiar way the sky meets lake, melding one blue into another, that makes me think of you. Two blues. Too blue. There's this line between them so thin I can't wrap my mind around it.

And now it's too late for sticking around.

It’s absurd.

I’m on a train riding from one unknown location to another, watching a beautiful mountainous snowscape slip by me on my way to somewhere new. Sharing my compartment, slouching across from me, is a young traveller who reminds me a lot of myself when I was his age. If I were in a better state, I’d know that’s exactly who it is. I can tell that I’ve perhaps drank a little too much, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m running from something. And I know he is too, but we don’t speak. I watch as he fixes his sleepy eyes on the window, and I know that’s precisely what he’s seeing: the glass of the window – nothing beyond.

Sometime later, we’re walking down a narrow city street, in an old part of town. I’m enjoying the sights, and the safe feeling of the weighty, unfamiliar buildings surrounding us. My fellow traveller has been irritable since our arrival.

He: You see how they do things here? It’s absurd.

I look around to see what he’s talking about, and find him stopped outside of an adult sex shop, its front window papered in pornography.

Me: What?

He: Any child on the street could walk right by and see this!

Me: So?

He: It’s disgusting! I wouldn’t want my kids seeing that stuff.

Me: Why not?

He: They just shouldn’t have such easy access to those kinds of images.

Me: I really don’t have a problem with it - I mean, it’s not like they’re allowed into the actual store, right? Meanwhile, the same child turned away from this store can walk right into the next internet café and actually simulate murdering other people with machine guns and rocket launchers-

He: -well, I’m not talking about that.

[I think we went on to argue about some other stuff, and maybe even travel somewhere else, but my memories get pretty fuzzy right around here. Woke up with a big headache. Just need some coffee, I think.]

Nytol dreams.

Diving into blue ice water, I take the path of least resistance and swim down, further and further, until I reach the bottom. There, I come across a girl with long flowing hair; her off-blonde locks swim about her head as she opens her mouth to speak.

She tells me lies.

She tells me of her home - a sphere of rock and water circling a gaseous, giant planet which, in turn, orbits a star much like my Sun. I call her bluff, but my words are trapped in air bubbles that scurry up to the surface of the lake. She tells me that I'm silly to think that life can exist only as I know it: breathing air, walking the earth, flying the skies, swimming the water. I tell her she's crazy - again, the air bubbles.

Smiling, she asks: "have you forgotten where you are?"