Laziness

Voyager reached the edges of the solar system and I ran my duster along the edges of the skirting board. I asked you if you would mind if I killed myself and you said you’d understand, but it didn’t quite answer the question. I wondered what the highlight of tomorrow would be, and to the whooping delight of the cleaning staff, found it to be the intoxicating scent of the marker pens. I felt like you wanted a reason, but I wasn’t sure there was one. Things just were. Unchanged. Unchangeable. The pens smelled so much almost like liquorice that I could have drawn rapidly, ceaselessly, on my tongue.

You should talk to someone about it. I lay in bed, mostly paralysed, with your hand on my arm, too delicate and clammy to be real. I felt a single tear slip from my eye, navigating between the fine hairs on my cheek, before it came to rest in the creases of my mouth. I felt the salt harden before I had strength to taste it on my tongue. I couldn’t contact the authorities, there was something too cliché about lying in the dark, crying. It was 05:00 AM before I recognised sleep would not take hold again.