Chinese Water Torture

 

04-30-80

 

The morning sky bleeds rain, a Chinese water torture inflicted on us day after day in a billion drips, leaving blistered bubbles on the top of my roof.

 I watch the bubbles as they make their escape towards the drains, only a handful surviving the falling drops, most burst.

 Her eyes are bubbles, wide open and vulnerable, and waiting. She sits here, giving me one word answers asked of her.

 She is a target. She is the girl with HIM. The GIRL with him. The GIRL with HIM.

 I watch her bubbles burst whenever she is near the others, and they ignore her. She has so many ideas, like flowers growing out of her ears, each withering for lack of attention.

 I keep thinking that if the only reason for life is death, why bother, one of those grim thoughts I'd been thinking a lot of lately.

 I talk with her. I ask her for advice, and watch her bloom each time. She sprouts ideas that are beyond my ability to comprehended, and they come out in such a rush I can hardly catch them, as if I was the only chance she might ever get to have her ideas aired.

 We sit in a cold apartment.

 She talks of men, and I think of myself, and how cruel I had been when I was younger, much worse in some ways than the men she knows. I have hidden my flaws behind a wall of concern, acting out the part of a kind and gentle person, when great rages roar in me, not against people so much as society, and my family, and the unfairness of life.

 If we're only going to die, what is the point? If no one will pay attention to us, why should we talk?

 She looked at me now, wondering where my attention has wandered to, and why I cannot grasp all that she is saying, she still believing herself inferior because of the way men have treated her, me knowing her better than that.

 I'm the one that should be in awe; I'm the one who should fear crushing this very pick able flower, as if she was a weed.

 The rain falls, staining each brick outside, staining each inch of the walkway up to the door.

 I am wet on the inside, dripping from my own painful thoughts.