people walking around in the street

after you had gone i was closed up in our whispers for about five or ten minutes. i could still hear them circling and wrapping around me like a heavy cloth weaved from worms, folding and squeezing around my head and chest. it made me feel dizzy until the words faded out of the air and i thought i could let go of your presence, but then i noticed the planets still swinging from where you had hit them with your head on the way out. they rocked on their invisible strings for far too long with their shadows following their path on the ceiling, getting smaller and bigger and smaller again. also, the rug was all scrunched up from where you must have landed on the bed clumsily or something. i realized half an hour after you left that i wasn't going to be able to get you to leave, so i took my pill and a lorazapam and fell asleep quickly.

i sat on the box by the living room window for a very long time. the colours in the sky changed. some cars went by slowly, avoiding the obsticles with care and others flew past before jamming on their brakes furthur down. one had a newspaper in the passenger seat and two had waitrose bags, and all the people that walked past were purpley grey and gave me such a strong sense of living, breathing constancy and changing shapes that for a moment it made me very sad that i would never be one of them. it made wish for a moment that i had never known and never seen the truth and that i still possessed the agnostic spiritual emptiness that the puppets have, even the religious ones. mum asked if i felt strange because you weren't here and i just said yes.