Nefelibata
one/one
You’re supposed to say thank you when you’re served food at a restaurant but I’m not at a restaurant, just a small and deserted fast food joint, so I don’t say thank you to the pimpled girl serving me. I never do anyway, even though I’m expected to.
I don’t like being told what to do or think.
It’s not rude – they have given me what I asked for, as is their job, so it’s nothing worthy of thanks. The thanks can go unspoken, if necessary.
I take a bite into the burger that I’ve ordered and chew loudly with my mouth open, feeling crumbs fall down below the collar of my shirt. The salt burns slightly to swallow down and the grease on my lips makes them feel oddly tight and waxy. I lick them then wipe my hands across them but it does little.
I imagine and plot while I walk. It’s the story of a fantasy world I haven’t named yet where magic doesn’t exist (anymore) but witches and wizards and warlocks do, leaving them with a constant feeling of being an outsider, not quite sure what makes them that little bit different from everyone else and not quite sure how to navigate it.
So far, I have 600 years of history with dozens of wars and changing kingdom boundary lines set out in my head as well as tentative family trees.
I’m not a writer; I don’t have the patience. I don’t care for books, either, when what I can imagine is so much better and I’m in control. I don’t like writers telling me what is happening and omitting information and deciding how people are feeling, only telling me what the world is like from their perspective.
I’ve been working on this story for a while now, adding in bits and bits whenever I don’t want to pay attention to what or who is around me.
I do that a lot.
I don’t care very much about the rest of the world. My thoughts are far more interesting. I don’t want to share them with people, either. I don’t think I could do them justice if I tried to articulate them, even if I cared enough.
I am walking quickly, the muscles in my thighs burning just a little. I’m not listening but I can hear my shoes on the pavement, smell the exhaust fumes from the cars whooshing by me on the road, the beep-beep-beep-beep of the crossing lights telling people when they can move and when they must stay still.
My mouth is dry from the burger. It sits strangely in my stomach and I clench the now empty wrapper in my hand, feeling it make my palm sticky with grease. I let my mouth hang open like a dog for a bit but it only dries it out more. Change jangles in my jumper pocket, threatening to fall out the sides or the holes onto the paving slabs with every step I take and my trousers flop around my ankles, damp at the bottoms from the earlier rain.
(“Those are pyjamas you can’t go outside in those. People will stare.”
“...”
“Are you even listening to me?”
“No, I’m not, so stop talking.”)
Sometimes I think I should pay more attention to life so it’s happening with me rather than to me.
It is lonely, sometimes, with only myself to really talk to. I don’t want to share my thoughts and I don’t know how to but they sit and go stagnant, slowly getting forgotten and neglected, and I regret not voicing them so at least someone knew what they were.
Days don’t consist of much. There’s no structure for them to be monotonous but that’s half the problem.
Sometimes I think I should stop and look more. Explore the world and see if I can actually care about the real people who surround me rather than the fellow cloud walkers I create, see if there are any interests I want to pursue.
But then I think about what I am expected to do and give in return if I breach the gap between me and the rest of the world. I’d have to give my time and my energy and my focus. I’d have to eat properly and make sure I looked proper and contribute to the bigger scheme of things and listen to things I have no interest in and I don’t care about, people that I don’t care about and who don’t care about me.
A part of me wants to try.
Most of me doesn’t care enough.
An even smaller part of me just wants to stay with my cloud walkers and thoughts, where no one expects anything of me and I can decide what my life is or isn’t, what has to be done or doesn’t and it’s safe. Everything is my ideal world with no complications.
My mouth is so dry I can feel with my sandpapery tongue where I haven’t brushed my teeth properly and plaque has formed and remnants of my burger continue to steal moisture.
I want to find water although it hasn’t reached the stage of necessity yet.
I turn left at the crossing lights, the red light bright, to go and find a corner shop that has a desperate enough owner for me to be able to wheedle them into letting me buy the water with the sparse change I have.
I’m still thinking about the build-up of plaque and my imaginary world and whether I should try harder sometimes to focus on the world around me as I step from pavement to tarmac.
Sometimes I think I should stop and look.
I don’t like being told what to do or think.
It’s not rude – they have given me what I asked for, as is their job, so it’s nothing worthy of thanks. The thanks can go unspoken, if necessary.
I take a bite into the burger that I’ve ordered and chew loudly with my mouth open, feeling crumbs fall down below the collar of my shirt. The salt burns slightly to swallow down and the grease on my lips makes them feel oddly tight and waxy. I lick them then wipe my hands across them but it does little.
I imagine and plot while I walk. It’s the story of a fantasy world I haven’t named yet where magic doesn’t exist (anymore) but witches and wizards and warlocks do, leaving them with a constant feeling of being an outsider, not quite sure what makes them that little bit different from everyone else and not quite sure how to navigate it.
So far, I have 600 years of history with dozens of wars and changing kingdom boundary lines set out in my head as well as tentative family trees.
I’m not a writer; I don’t have the patience. I don’t care for books, either, when what I can imagine is so much better and I’m in control. I don’t like writers telling me what is happening and omitting information and deciding how people are feeling, only telling me what the world is like from their perspective.
I’ve been working on this story for a while now, adding in bits and bits whenever I don’t want to pay attention to what or who is around me.
I do that a lot.
I don’t care very much about the rest of the world. My thoughts are far more interesting. I don’t want to share them with people, either. I don’t think I could do them justice if I tried to articulate them, even if I cared enough.
I am walking quickly, the muscles in my thighs burning just a little. I’m not listening but I can hear my shoes on the pavement, smell the exhaust fumes from the cars whooshing by me on the road, the beep-beep-beep-beep of the crossing lights telling people when they can move and when they must stay still.
My mouth is dry from the burger. It sits strangely in my stomach and I clench the now empty wrapper in my hand, feeling it make my palm sticky with grease. I let my mouth hang open like a dog for a bit but it only dries it out more. Change jangles in my jumper pocket, threatening to fall out the sides or the holes onto the paving slabs with every step I take and my trousers flop around my ankles, damp at the bottoms from the earlier rain.
(“Those are pyjamas you can’t go outside in those. People will stare.”
“...”
“Are you even listening to me?”
“No, I’m not, so stop talking.”)
Sometimes I think I should pay more attention to life so it’s happening with me rather than to me.
It is lonely, sometimes, with only myself to really talk to. I don’t want to share my thoughts and I don’t know how to but they sit and go stagnant, slowly getting forgotten and neglected, and I regret not voicing them so at least someone knew what they were.
Days don’t consist of much. There’s no structure for them to be monotonous but that’s half the problem.
Sometimes I think I should stop and look more. Explore the world and see if I can actually care about the real people who surround me rather than the fellow cloud walkers I create, see if there are any interests I want to pursue.
But then I think about what I am expected to do and give in return if I breach the gap between me and the rest of the world. I’d have to give my time and my energy and my focus. I’d have to eat properly and make sure I looked proper and contribute to the bigger scheme of things and listen to things I have no interest in and I don’t care about, people that I don’t care about and who don’t care about me.
A part of me wants to try.
Most of me doesn’t care enough.
An even smaller part of me just wants to stay with my cloud walkers and thoughts, where no one expects anything of me and I can decide what my life is or isn’t, what has to be done or doesn’t and it’s safe. Everything is my ideal world with no complications.
My mouth is so dry I can feel with my sandpapery tongue where I haven’t brushed my teeth properly and plaque has formed and remnants of my burger continue to steal moisture.
I want to find water although it hasn’t reached the stage of necessity yet.
I turn left at the crossing lights, the red light bright, to go and find a corner shop that has a desperate enough owner for me to be able to wheedle them into letting me buy the water with the sparse change I have.
I’m still thinking about the build-up of plaque and my imaginary world and whether I should try harder sometimes to focus on the world around me as I step from pavement to tarmac.
Sometimes I think I should stop and look.