Elastic Heart, II

Dreams are strange in intoxicated fogs, but you have an unnerving feeling your subconscious knows what it's doing. She writes to ask, if we do not make it, will you take the baby? and I cried on the A train, because it's hard to find the words to say you were already watching over this life as though it came from your own limbs. I said, yes. Morning dragged itself across my open wounds, my skinned knees, do you ever get so used to hurting that you forgot what ailed you to begin with?

The little girl sits patiently waiting at the blinking cursor. Her edges are scuffed, too, she did not ask for you to throw her in the flame, this fire that she did not know how she could survive, but you insisted she would, insisted she must. You pulled her through it by her hair, demanded she learn and grow and get the fuck back up out of the dirt every time she fell, and did she not follow your every vengeful command? Here she sits now, ready for her rewards. Here she sits, waiting for you to pick her up, brush her off, lift her up to a moment's rest in the sunlight. She whispers in your ear, Did you know that all the characters in your dreams are just variations of you?

I step up to the cursor. Begin the long drive home.