the space above my ears.

In the Heat of the Rain

It was to me as ice is to fire.

Walking into a house to escape the blizzard just to find that the house is even more biting and blustering than the weather I was running from.

It was to me as a broken toe is to a cavity.

Moving the ache from one place to another, although it never really leaves, it just dulls in comparison.

It was, to me, a blanket of insulation, pink and dirty and sour.

There was something wrong and there had been for days.

I don't remember exactly who I told

Or where I picked up the tolerance

Or even where I heard of it.

The ritual, I mean.

I remember little beyond myself watching the other girls share looks and try to keep themselves smiling for me.

There was such fear in the beholder's eyes and I felt embarrassed.

It was a process no more complex than the urge to feel something more than the fear of never feeling again.

It didn't have to be good, didn't have to be safe.

It just had to be enough to remember that outside of my four-inch-thick glass case, the city was still sleeping.

Still breathing, still chuckling to each other in the buggy behind the horse.

Still moving, thinking, talking, living

Without me.

Of course, I didn't have it in me at the time to be hurt by that.

I just watched the jet planes fly overhead, leaving behind trails like mortar oozing between two bricks.

The souls inside hadn't left their bodies, I observed, and I wondered if mine already had and I just didn't know it yet.

It made me feel as stupid as the man who invented "okay"

A concept that is supposedly a compromise between two extremes.

A muddled, unspecific mess of feeling, looking, sounding, smelling, spending.

I've been given a second chance and already I'm wasting hours counting other hours I've wasted here.

Valuable time spent searching for the latent content in these ghostly scenarios I've unconsciously placed myself in.

Especially the dream about that show.

The marionettes on strings lined up on the stage like commuters with their briefcases.

Arms different lengths, heads on the wrong necks, 4 fingers on each hand - give or take.

They can't tell themselves apart from each other and they don't know which way is up or down, but the show must go on.

It's an awful performance, some morbid skit where one puppet, who is wearing half a pair of glasses, robs and murders a puppet who is wearing the other half.

He doesn't bother grabbing the other fraction of the spectacles off his victim's face before scurrying off stage.

Takes everything but that, in fact, his pocket watch, his wedding ring, his overcoat.

They have last any semblance of enthusiasm they may have had by Act Two, slogging through every scene, more focused on keeping their mismatched limbs together.

I cannot criticize too harshly, though; I'm the only person watching and I'm truthfully a pretty dead audience.

And then the one where I've fallen out of a boat into a dark, murky lake.

It's an hour before dusk, the sun is setting, the world is cast in an orange glow.

It's light and I still have time, so I shouldn't feel afraid.

There are whispers bubbling up from the depths of the waters, though, and there's unmistakable energy of dread blossoming around me.

Not far away, a pacifier floats on the water.

Now I know why.

I have to get out of here.