It is the afternoon. My shirt is too sticky on my skin; I am trying to find rest. My mind keeps turning back to that godforsaken girl I am not supposed to think about. Pain flares in my chest and recedes in waves, ever awaiting a dam break.
My mother is speaking to an imaginary person beside me, who lives inside her head. I know what she’s doing. I, too, hold myself with both hands and pretend it is a lover. My mother and I see depth where there is nothing. Lovers of life even with nothing to love.
Her phone pings, for the 3rd time. I am losing my shit at this. It’s a Sunday, and she’s here working. She’s supposed to be sleeping. She spends more time with her phone than with me. Sometimes I feel like a wailing infant, asking for a pacifier with the only garbled sounds I can manage. I wonder what it would sound like if she ever acquiesced?
My head is pushed into the weight of the mattress, finger softly sandwiched between it and the headboard. I’ve always liked something ensconcing my hand, I’m not sure why.
Her phone is pinging again. I can feel the vibrations of her ringer in my head. I remember it all at once, fifth grade maths--
All energy is either transferred, conserved, or converted. Energy is not created, and it does not die. Physics is a marvel, one I stopped studying in the ninth grade. That, that’s kinetic energy, bringing the sound waves from the buzzing box here. I can picture the little fibers on my mattress raising like a standing ovation going around the theatre. No energy is ever created or destroyed. What lived in lithium is now pulsing against my eardrums. We all go from one state of being to the next...
Nothing is ever created or destroyed. You and I will live in the stars when this is all over. They will know us in another time; maybe not by these names, but through the sky. They will clutch to their hearts the things we write.
Keep on living, my darling
