Escape
    ^^^^^^

Another typhoon blew through, and no one noticed. The world is 
drunk on trying not to care---or trying not to die. But in the
meantime the mildew runs wild.

I sat typing, or trying to. I gave in and decided to quit. But
colon-q broke everything. The wall of text remained, while the
unblinking cursor mocked my feeble attempt to escape. Nothing
should freeze in this heat, not while it's this humid in here.
Out of lame desperation, I punched Esc, just to see. And I saw
everything.

I saw myself, suddenly, as if through a toilet paper roll... 
blowing bouyantly into a melodica in the subway. Dumb and innocent,
but confident. Even while the other passengers misunderstood. I had
that power then. It was too much to have it again, so I struck Esc
to avoid answering to that wiser version of myself. 

Then we were on the beach again. It was sundown, and the waves were
gentle enough that you didn't have to care, but strong enough to
move your bones. The sand moved like a fluid, sparkling and falling 
over itself like brown sugar. Everything was sherbert. We were so 
fat with pleasure then, in spite of the roaches even. Pop was dying,
and we didn't even know it yet. We were just floating, already 
hoping it could be this way again soon. We had no idea the world 
would turn in upon itself, that its implosion would in time make 
invalids of us all.

With every successive stroke of Esc, the mildew only grew. Exposing
more wounds and ways I've already decayed. My past returned to mock
me, matter-of-factly reminding me that the only way to escape is to
decompose. But here I am trying to write something, build
something, be something. The world just breaks your nose, and
nobody knows it---we're all so deep in our holes. The only way out
of this is risking whatever holds you together.

But even dirt---dirt is alive. Yet here we are, trying so damn hard
to survive. How can the living care so little for life?


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                                                 mieum@rawtext.club