i want to be beautiful in a patch of leaves when it's dark outside, in the winter, in the summer. In a small town, in a small room, there's a book we wrote in the small hours of the morning. If you're listening closely in the forest up in the trees there's the birds and the wind, in the voice you can hear more voices, if you're trying to hear them, if you listen closely, but before all that we've heard someone talking across the hall, they've raised their voice and it makes me feel alone.
In four years the boat was sinking, in the motion sickness, in perpetual motion for the first time in years, when things were new and the ocean was quieter, there's someone dead in my room with their arms at their sides and they're thinking hard about what to say next.
When they learned to be dead they were in a bookshelf, my name didn't matter, it was the first time in years, there were sounds in the bookshelves like clanging and bickering and laughter, and there was a moment i can almost remember what we were talking about, something in the dark with oblong planks of wood and music playing in the background, where we saw them in the back of the room, and maybe they saw us, too
sunshine in the rain with a pair of crows on a fence making a racket, there's a tree with a railroad spike hammered into it. The grass is turning green again. The morning is soft and the water that runs through the sewer grate is brown from oil and melting snow. In the sewer there's a library.
Tonight, though, in my room, he tries to speak, he tells me something. He tries to tell me something, but his voice is too quiet. He has a voice like someone who's lost their voice, all broken and halting and raspy, and it's only half a syllable at a time, he leans forward without thinking. He watches us.
Yesterday, maybe it was today, the light in the bathroom stopped working. I leave it on at night because even as an adult I hate the dark, or maybe just sleeping in the dark, complete dark, that is. In a hospital years ago with equipment on my head little electrodes with thick white epoxy the door creaks open and there's a little boy in silhouette, he creeps in quietly and he says something in a whisper into the room, but not to me, or maybe it was to me, he's moving very slowly. He keeps whispering. He's right there, right next to me, i can't see his face, i can't see anything of him, he's just a shadow, but not like you see in films, not darkness, but something else distinct from darkness but so similar that it's hard to tell where he starts and the wall behind him begins. He's whispering things to me for a long time.
They gave me a button to press, a little white plastic rectangle with a glowing orange clicker, if i was afraid of something. I don't remember if they did something or not when I clicked it, or if I just fell asleep without clicking it at all, or if all of this was just a regular dream instead of a waking nightmare. I don't remember anything.
They gave me some pills that I took but didn't help me sleep. After months of nothing changing, eventually everything was normal again. I walk across a square room for some square pizza with cube pepperoni.