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I strip and I'm pretty. And the little useless pieces of paper fall, fall.
I turn round and am startled;
There's someone standing behind me. As I approach, so does she.
Her brow furrows and she grimaces; this isn't the time for company.
Book titles.
Supermarket lists.
She is so silent; I wonder if there exists in her mind the myriad thoughts in mine.
They don't show.
*giggle*
She fits perfectly behind her wall.
I wonder if she'll give in to torpor.
Watch the carpet, love. It can burn.
New songs.
Addresses.
Find the yellow one down there, will you? It has a sticky back.
I knew i'd been dreaming a lot lately.
but they haven't been writing well.
no, maybe that was me.
there's nothing more.
not without you here.
but if i left?
you put on her tail.
her mermaid's tail.
it changed your DNA.
your language.
you kicked me out.
i had to leave my bike.
my mattress.
it was my garage.
you left with her.
you're changing everything.
the daylight burns.
it is apposite.
I am exceedingly soft and warm and cuddly. I have curves in all the right places, and I smell good. The sheets are clean, and the bed is always big enough. The fan is on, the temperature is a nice mid range 25 C. It's not a white christmas, but at least it's raining. Locals disdain rain during the holidays, but I reckon it's the best alternative of all our possibilities. Remember lying in a cabin, back amongst the trees, with the wind blowing through the fly screen, and the rain falling ponderously down on the tin roof?
That's one of the most romantic sounds in the world.
What's wrong with this picture?
Do you ever wish you could uncomplicate relationships? Not specific to romantic relationships, but just... in general?
So that when you tell someone, "I'm irritated with my roommate because he/she was up drinking all night with his/her visiting friends and they were singing loud drinking songs at 12.15 am," people will react objectively? They can tell you what they really think or if you're just whinging. Because it doesn't matter if they offend you, or your roommate, or have complete shit advice, because they don't know you well enough for it to matter.
Maybe it's not a desire for some relationships to be uncomplicated; that is inaccurate. I am always grateful for the people I know well enough that they understand exactly what I mean (even when all I do is garble at them) and their continuing support.
There is just a... craving, maybe? A desire? To talk to someone who knows nothing about you or your life and likely will never care. They can keep you in line, prevent you from wallowing in the depths of your own misery.
Real friends are great, but it's harder for them to blow you off.
What if you need someone to slap you in the face like that? Cause you're sick of yourself?
I need a stash of objective, replaceable conversationalists.
I figure parallel universes have to exist.
There are so many what-ifs in life; there wouldn't be a point to being able to think about what-ifs unless there was some way they could all be validated. Consider all the times you've wondered, how would your life be different if you'd gone to this university? Moved to that place? Dated this person? All in place of your current university, location, significant other. And for each decision that changes, every subsequent decision could stay the same, or could change as well. The number of alternatives increases exponentially. Does it have to be set in stone?
It's really all just a game. In some other universe, maybe even just another world, there has to be an equivalent but opposite version of events taking place.
I think a lot of people decide not to believe in parallel universes not because of the supposed improbability of it all, or because of the ensuing God issue, but because it trivializes our lives. If there are multiple versions of us out there, each making different decisions and living completely different (similar?) lives, we cease to be unique. And uniqueness is one of the primary characteristics of being rational, conscious beings.
To the best of our knowledge and ability to understand, the universe is infinite. We have not yet found an 'edge' of the universe, nor does anyone have any worthwhile, legitimate theories about what is then beyond the 'edge'. We are incapable of viewing even a tiny percentage of the universe. What we can see, when we look at the horizon, is at most about 14 billion light years away, because that's how old the universe is estimated to be. Now change our reference frame; if we were on the most distant star in our visible universe, what would we see? What defines the visible universe from that point, from the 'edge' of our visible universe? We have no way of knowing how much farther it goes, or where it stops. Maybe it takes a turn at 50 billion, like a mountain highway. Maybe it drops for a few light years, like the edge of a cliff. But in all that space, even just to our horizon, doesn't it logically make sense to assume that there is an equally infinite (or finite, if you insist) number of possible states for us to exist in, rather than an infinite number of identical states? Also, these considerations are only spatial. The likelihood of all this, yet again, increases exponentially if we consider a greater number of dimensions that define reality, or if we consider time travel.
To an arthropod of your choice, the universe is likely limited to the area it travels throughout its life. Perhaps it does have some concept of existence, and maybe it has a sense of community. But beyond its own life, it can't encompass anything more. I think we are like that. We are the arthropods of the Earth. We understand our own existence relatively well (some of us do), and we pretend to be enlightened and have some knowledge of the universe around us. But really? We can't pretend to understand what we don't know exists.
So yah, I reckon parallel universes are a must have. Cause if this is the only version of life I get, there damn well better be another version of me out there somewhere who's doing a better job than I am.
I wish we could weigh words.
You can feel them when they come out of your mouth.
Some of them float, and migrate themselves upwards to hang out with the cobwebs.
Others sink, straight to the bottom of your existence, where you tread on them and grind them into the floorboards.
Difficult to classify particular words, cause it would be different for every person.
But consonants, for sure, are much heavier than vowels.
So whenever you speak, both the literal weight of the word, in terms consonants and vowels, and the psychological connotation unique to you, must be considered.
How much do you weigh now?
The train car was spinning, round and round, like a teacup ride at an amusement park, even as the train continued its forward travel on the tracks. I guess that’s how this train worked, because no one seemed bothered by the irregular motion. My mum, sister and I kept traveling to forward cars. Forward, ever forward, putting more distance between them and us. We lurched as the brakes squealed, and the momentum of the train slowed, slowed, until it came to rest at an empty station. We disembarked. Can’t stop moving. The train behind us started again, the cars spinning as the whole thing disappeared into the distance. We headed towards the only building in sight; a department store, standing out against the dusty backdrop of nothing. Perhaps that was where they wanted us to go. Doesn’t matter. There were no alternatives. We hit the doors running, up the escalators at the back. Knocked into a man on the way. Sorry, guy. No time to be polite. We kept moving up, past the service desk, past the shoes, past the brassieres, past the toothpaste. Who needs a choice from 150 different kinds of toothpaste? To the fifth floor, against the north wall, lay our destination. A utilities cupboard, to the unsuspecting; so much more, to someone in the know. Someone like me. But how to get them in? I could get into the closet, no problem; I had my key. But I couldn’t get them past that point, couldn’t get them through the next passageway, without help. There was only one person left who could help me. And he wasn’t here. But as we rounded the last corner on the fifth floor, skirting the laundry baskets and the colored plastic clothes pegs, there he was. Coincidence? Perhaps. Maybe he needed laundry detergent and heard me running. The pattern of my footfalls must be familiar to him after all this time. He met us at the entrance to the utility closet. Inside, we shut and locked the door behind us. Now came the tricky part. The entryway was still there, at head height, behind the bleach bucket, like I remembered. A small door, set in the wall, only 12 inches high by 12 inches wide, with a plastic handle. No key to open this door. I pulled it open. The hinge was a little rusty. Clearly, this one had been forgotten. Behind that door was another, this one only 10 inches by 10 inches. And set inside the second door lay the third, 8 inches by 8 inches. As the third door swung open, he and I froze. There were people inside the room. There should not have been people inside the room. We could see their faces, staring back at us, and smell the stink of unwashed bodies in an unventilated, confined space. It was a big room, but there had to be, what, 50 of them? Before I could figure it out, he knew what had happened. He always was quicker on the uptake than me. He said this must be the last lot. The final group of people two of our comrades were moving, almost a year ago. They had been killed in the war, presumably after getting these people into the room, and no one else had been aware of them to get them back out. I had no idea how they’d survived this long. It took… special talents, to move regulars. I hesitate to call it magic, because, what is magic? Here, it was just an ability a few of us had, the ability to move people through a series of miniature entryways to a hidden room only a few knew about. Sounds silly when it’s written out. We could get in on our own, he and I, but it always took a second to move the regs. We got my family in, and promised to be back for all of them. It was convenient to pretend, for their sakes, that we were in control of our futures.
Outside, the black figures had drawn closer. They were here.
***
The house may have been my dad’s, in a different life. The front room, where we stood near to the wall, was the same. The door, the fireplace, the lounge. But the floors were wooden; that was different. They should have been carpeted. But it didn’t matter. He was with me, and the sun was streaming in the open windows. The music swirled around our heads before disappearing up the stairs. I closed my eyes, and the light reflected inside my eyelids, so I opened them. It was nicer to see his face anyway. And the rest of him, as it was no longer restricted to the confines of his outfit. A breeze blew in from the windows behind the couch, but it was not chilly. A strand of hair came to rest across my face. It was an excuse for him to touch me. To raise his hand and sweep the curl back behind my ear, to follow the contoured lines of my neck down to my shoulder, and rest his hand around the nape of my neck. There was no thought behind the movement. His other hand slipped around my waist and settled against the small of my back. It was only natural to close the distance between us, to take that step forward. To resist his arms, his embrace, was not an option.
[Edited for explicit content.]
***
The liquid kept falling. More and more, falling into a basin that could only hold so much. And then it stopped falling, but the basin started to overflow anyway. We were upstairs, in a bathroom the size of my last apartment. One side of the room was made of fly-screen, and looked out to a forest. Ordinarily, quite refreshing. It was nice to look out at the trees while in a bath, or doing whatever else needs doing in a bathroom. But right then, the basin continued to overflow. I’ve no idea what it was filling with, or from where the liquid was coming from. But the drains weren’t working. The drain in the shower, the sink, the toilet... none of them were draining. The level of liquid in the bathroom was rising at an alarming rate. Already, we were standing in 4 inches. You were with me, and had no suggestions. My suitcase rested on the floor behind us. It was imperative that the contents of my suitcase remain dry. When there is no recourse, actions are made of desperation. You and I retrieved our plastic yellow and green containers, with Yoplait written across the side, and bailed out the bathroom. It was perhaps not the best use of recycled yoghurt containers. But it worked. We bailed and bailed, until the ground outside, below the screen wall in the bathroom, was coated in a layer of wetness. And the sun shone, shone, and all the millions of water droplets, busily refracting the light, pondered their immortality.
