and in the shine coming off the clouds. you see them on t-shirts. you see them in planes, lurking in lobbies and tunnels and by every party’s snack table, at the bottom of bodies of water, in people who look familiar but who won’t wave back. it takes confidence or something like it to walk alone at night: imagine them hovering as you walk between the edge of the continent and sea. they exist popularly in music and movies and through all of time and you keep hearing the denial of them, get a strange feeling of blame for bringing them to mind. you taboo yourself, think, it’s either something very wrong and feel bad, or curl inwards and don’t mention it and feel bad. some nights select boys try to creep closer by asking what i think about them and if i say the truth they inch closer still until the weird gets weird and the trope comes into full view and mimes a capture and fades from discomfort. one night in the lush valley i start to read a book about them and panic. i’m in the apartment and i feel all feeling pull away from the perimeters and move away from the windows and try to find a central spot and stand in the door frame of our windowless bathroom. i call e to discuss because she is in social work school and she says ok want to go to the movies and i say yes sure and i wait in the door frame until she calls again when she is downstairs. we drive to the mall with b and t. because it gets laughed off i quiet it, let it seep in further. the fear of being thought of as foolish and years younger. the fear of being thought of.
i am trying to put myself back into feeling. in efforts to recall fear i rewatch a movie i once hid from. the film opens silent. there are violins pressed low on the neck through the leader. all electricity jumps on in a house in a field. i think there is nothing so charming about holding hands with a predator or running straight into a maze. a mom had mentioned this would be creepy but this is nothing like what you could have predicted. the present day is all desert and lush 49