A: Idiot. 

Q: What?

A: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and on. There’s no cure for it. The question’s stupid. 

Q: Then–

A: Listen. At thirteen my old man tells me he’s dreamt I’ve started three wars and killed so many men. This is your question. The same. Take all I’ve done wrong somewhere else in their dreams and then know there’ve been no wars, I’ve killed no men, and nothing is changed. It isn’t a consequence.

Q: So–

A: So we’ll take your answers and wrap them in swaddling cloth, carry them down to the river to hope they make it to another’s shore. But in all this time you’ve forgotten they’re stone. You drop them from your mouth, to the river, and they sink to make the smallest ripple. The world is shaped no differently. 

Q: So instead?

A: Instead: there are things alive in this river. Find those. 

A: Lately I am not-things: not staid or needy or acutely bored or solitarily dealing with a cloudy swollen ego, not tired or overworked– something like stepping away from an outline of yourself still feeling the pressure of the chalk around your limbs. M calls, early early morning, and I’m not old enough to panic yet, and he wants to talk about what he wants or that he’s been sick lately or both and I will. The decisions to make now are what to be full of, what kinds of liquids and when, and that it isn’t sponge-like or drain-like but instead just another kind of bowl or a jar. Early morning is a hard time to walk quietly to such a loud thing, and I try not to touch the objects we own, disturb them, because nothing else asked to be a part of it. I’ll keep my voice as close to nothing as possible, practicing delicacy. In the mornings when I wake up that’s chalk dust on the sheets. 

Q: But what is it, the worry.

A: The same. I’m trying not to hurt anything. 

A: Today on the train an older man had made it barely through the doors of my second stop. I don’t know what they call the people that drive the trains. Drove? Conducted? The conductor. The conductor was friendly and reminded us cheerfully to let the elderly and disabled have the seats. I didn’t know if our cheerful conductor would have considered this man old enough to be elderly. What the conductor really said was that if we are young and vigorous we should let the elderly and disabled have our seats. The day had been long. At the end of the day someone had asked if I was tired which means I had conveyed that I was tired. I think I had rubbed my eyes, wearily. If I had let the man have my seat he could have looked at me and thought young, perhaps, but not vigorous. He had barely made it through the doors and when he crept through he had become much younger. Vigorous, even. What slight danger does to a body. 

Q: And the seat?

A: It is rare to get a seat on this train.