"Nichole?"
"Hmm," she didn't look up from her eggs as she picked away shell from pieces of edible egg.
"Do you think--I mean, like, do you think that we create messes?" My words fell out of my mouth awkwardly and Nichole finally looked up at me. "I mean, like, do we create the messes or are we just the messes and everywhere we go spread the mess. Like the infinitely increasing entropy of ourselves?"
Pepper shaker in hand, Nichole looked down at her eggs, torn from their shell, separated from the yolk, and ripped from other pieces of egg white. When she looked back up at me, she said, "Where do you come up with these things?"
***
S: I'm sorry the past couple weeks have been stressful. But all will be well soon. Just keep doing your best. U r da bomb.
H: Thanks Sam. You are fucking awesome.
***
In my dream, my face is close to your chest; the fabric scratches my nose. The phrase is tête-à-tête... sort of. My arm drapes over your middle, barely touching whatever is underneath us. You speak, slowly and sleepily, and tell me about the sharks. I realize my fingertips touch sand, warm in the summer sun. You describe the sharks, snarling and snapping, as if sharks could make such noises. But I believe you. (Trusting, gullible, your choice.) You say the sharks are coming and what was once an image of a calm, lapping, welcoming ocean beneath a sun whose heat hugs me snugly, becomes dark and cold and frightening. The ocean beckons us, not with open arms, but with a cruel, gnarled finger. I squirm closer to your chest, to protection. Your arms tighten in response. Coming for us how? Who knows, but they are coming. The water-bound sharks do indeed snarl and snap as they propel themselves across the sand with their fins. We are flightless.
***
While driving and sad, the easiest way to measure your stability is to listen to the radio. If you are the saddest of sads, one of two things will happen. You will become stressed by the lack of relatable and acceptable content provided by the radio conglomerates, causing you to smack a random selection of buttons at once and cry out pathetically before slowing down and pulling over to the side of the road to sob loudly in the semi-privacy of your car. People passing might think about stopping to make sure you're okay, but your obvious wailing will make their eyes widen and allow them to continue on their path without guilt. When you finally compose yourself, you will simply turn on your directional, fruitlessly wipe your eyes, and continue crying (quietly) as you approach (slowly) your destination; you are alone.
This is the first option. The second comes when every radio station and every corporately-owned popstar seems to understand your current emotion; they've created these songs especially for you, sad, lonely, down-trodden, crest-fallen, heart-broken, listener. Someone, on the other end of your car speakers seems to understand. You are not alone; the everyone you are with melds into one being. You know this amalgamation of persons that has become one exists somewhere and they knows the depth of your sadness; their words are a reflection of your soul. So, like the (sad) kindred spirits you are, you scream, together.
***
I am crying in an uncontrollable manner. My sobs make it almost impossible to speak and my nose has become too stuffed to provide air. Haylee sits across from me on my bed, telling me I'm okay and that I just need to calm down. "Buddy, buddy, it's okay," she says as I helplessly throw my head into her lap. I blubber, trying to explain more eloquently why I'm upset. I cry and cry and cry. Haylee says I should watch something engrossing. What she means is mind-numbing, but that's okay; I wouldn't mind being numb. Both her hands rest on my back, taking the vibrations of my tears. I cover my face in embarrassment. Eventually, I stop crying and sit up. "I'm okay," I lie. "I'm sorry," I say, telling the truth.
"What? No! Sammi! Stop. Don't be ridiculous. You're totally fine," Haylee tries to assure me, smiling at me. I return the smile weakly and look at my hands in my lap. I think hateful things about my hands and the other parts of my body that interact with the world. I think of all the harm they do and the wake of stupidity and annoyingness and bad they leave. As I disintegrate, my particles of unworthy and terrible disperse into the atmosphere. The mess I spread simply by existing disgusts me and I think of ways to exist less, exist smaller. I draw my knees to my chest. I need a way to shrink; no one can know I'm here.
I am not here, I am not here, I am not here.
I glance up once more before collapsing inward entirely. Haylee is still looking at me. Her eyes are big and sad and reaching. She seems to be cleaning my mess as I create it and I want her to stop before everything I am, everything bad, hurts her. She rebuilds my shambles and negates my entropic force with her calm. She absorbs my particles, overpowers them, turns them good, and gently puts me back together. I am here.
***
"Don't fucking move
'Cause everything you thought you had will go to shit.
We've got a lot.
Don't you dare forget that.
And I'm wasted.
You can taste it.
Don't look at me that way
'Cause I'll be hanging from a rope.
I will haunt you like a ghost."
"Then you walk
under the streetlights
and you're too drunk to notice
that everyone is staring at you
you don't care what you look like
the world is falling around you
You just have to see her
You just have to see her
You just have to see her
You know that she'll break you in two"
