shallow

Jadira, why are you so hollow? I want to write about you, but all I can picture is the void.

The farther you go, the less they call back, the crazy brainy bitchy girl said to me. I knew she was right. But I had the blond hairs of Batha in my head. I stumbled outward, embracing delirium, hoping for clarity. Thinking the waters were friendly, they'd take care of me, allow me. To plant a kiss, grow a forest, house a development.

I'm patient, on the shore of the puddle, playing with the pebbles, picking them up, holding them, naming them, nah. Dropping them back on the ground. Patiently waiting for nothing. The end is a theory. Nothing.

There was Batha, in static, back in the puddle. Jostled with waves. Worked a double shift and made 232$ by the time I decided I'd stacked enough items. Swung by some current Batha was on, so I thought, in memories of closed circuit television broadcasts and pranks played on me in the crooked bathroom, by the people I don't know upstairs.

Satellite beams crossed, ringtones rang out of suitcases, and I felt the obsessive compulsive pebble in my pocket. There was another one in another pocket. I held two pebbles. Captain Kidd used to tell me, if you make a mistake, do it again. It sounded like the right thing to do. I could see Batha shimmering somewhere ahead. With a friend. Beside a truck. What could I do? Make friendly shallow talk. Never more than friendly. Sometimes more than crazy.

Jadira, I know you're not hollow. I just have a tin ear. I like to think of myself as a genetic defect. That's how evolution works, they tell me. I'm one of the mutations, but I serve no function. I'm a byproduct of the process that will result in perfect people somewhere down the line, or people pebble polyalloys. That I could see. I do see it sometimes. Sometimes I see you, sometimes I even hear you.

I have my lucky pebble in my hand. But I'm getting sleepy, I'm going to drop it. I want to see one of you again, even if that's all it is. A hollow ring. Strewn talismen and women. I'm patient in the void.