This is what I get for letting my songlist play on repeat while napping.
Are you still...still breathing...
Overidentification with Graham from 'But I'm a Cheerleader'...I'm sitting in the coffee house, trying to discern whether the song playing is diegetic or not, when I'm taken from both sides in a sensory assault. On my left, my parents are dressed in sunday clothes, all starched and stiff. They wear looks of stark disapproval on their faces. On the right, Wayne. Wayne, with his animated gestures and casual wit, making fun of a gothic grrl reciting her lame suicide poetry on the stage. Daddy is dressing me down for dropping my advanced Spanish course, and I can't focus on what he's saying when Wayne's hand rests on my arm.
"Are you listening to me? We're concerned about your future!"
"So am I," I whisper, looking to my right.
So maybe I'm just a horizon you run to when she has left you there
Wayne is dumping me. The dream shifts so abruptly, but I know what's happening. Getting dumped has a tangible aura of pretense, and I can read it in his every expression.
"Angela is having second thoughts about the divorce."
A part of me shudders, bursts into fire knowing that this was inevitable, but wishing it had waited. For what, exactly, I can't say.
I am folded and unfolded and unfolding...