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locked, falling: for generations
i imagine two eagles, talons locked, falling to something like death,Anesthetized
The voice on the radio cuts in and out for a few seconds before going dead. When the sound returns, it’s nothing but static, and I fall back into my seat, craning my head up to look at the car’s ceiling. It’s beige and matted from all the dirt that’s flown in through the windows on our road trips. She loves the window down, even if I try to remind her that when we first bought the car, she’d run her hands over the soft fabric and smiled. It was pristine then.
Now, it’s a beat-up Volvo sitting on a dirt trail that’s barely even dirt, really, being so overgrown. I saw a church a while back down the road, I’m pretty sure, but the details just keep fading the more I try to run my fingers over the memory, wanting to trace its outline. I think there was a spire. I should be able to see it from here, but turning my body to look feels impossible.
I stare out through the windshield, at the tall grass and reeds covering the ground so thoroughly it looks painted on. Reds, purples, greens, and browns blend together into the distance, and the more the sun sets, the more it seems to grow into the sky. It’s sort of beautiful, in an ugly way.
My skin and clothing stick uncomfortably to the leather seats while I try to shift and readjust. This heat is miserable, and my eyelids feel heavier by the second, and I really just want to fall asleep in the gross humidity of this car, but it feels so much like I’m forgetting something important.
My mind wanders back to the spire– so sharp and uninviting.
The radio crackles again, and my eyebrows furrow– scrunching up like little rolling hills with hairs like grass, sticking out at different smooth and bristly angles. The static starts to fill my mind, and my head feels like an ear that won’t pop. The pressure’s building, and the static calls on summer cicadas until it’s blaring– an alarm, warning me, but I get this feeling that it's the danger, too.
Parasitic
My body is red and raw, cracking like a salt flat, with those same white lines of peeling skin. The resemblance is uncanny, really.
I’m trying not to fall asleep, the awkwardly hard porcelain bathtub cradling me, and the water both lukewarm and uncomfortable, but sort of soothing. Uncomfortable things have an annoying habit of being helpful in the end.
The room feels stagnant in a slightly doomed way– like a glass of water left in the heat, impending bacteria and mosquito eggs– until the door opens a crack.
“Hey… you alright?” a soft voice calls in, and I just grunt in response. “I brought you some aloe. Can I come in?”
I feel my chest rise and fall in a big sigh, and I call on all my energy to respond a little “Yeah.”
When she walks in, she looks a little worried, and sits on the stool next to me, towels I’d set aside for myself stacked between her and its wood. “How’re you feeling?”
I can’t do much but shrug my shoulders, exhausted. “I shouldn’t be surprised. I know I should know better– be better– but I’m just… tired.”
She nods and I watch her unwrap some cut up brown paper bags, a large aloe leaf wet and heavy inside, a slice already cut down the middle. I close my eyes and feel the cool gel cover my arm, snaking up to my shoulder.
I imagine a mosquito laying eggs in the water, her hands holding my hair up and out of the way.