I keep wanting to write things. I keep throwing words like darts and lashing sentences with globby brushstrokes of paint, but nothing sticks, nothing forms, nothing coagulates into a finished product I can stamp my name on and shoot into cyberspace to fall upon the unsuspecting browsers of my Facebook feed, or dare we hope it Google.

I keep wanting to take this bubble that's living in my throat and dissect it; determine its make and origin--whether it is privy to my draining sinuses or a figment of my mucusy emotions.

And I don't even care if that brought about the reaction of dry-heaving.

It's America. I can describe snot if I want to.

It's a story I'm lacking, I suppose. I keep making it this far with choice or decently passable words, then it all stops.




I held the glass up to the light and thought I'd watch the minerals dance, the participle particles that peel from shredding ice cubes and swirl like captive sky Indians across a current one wouldn't think a stationary glass possessed. He watched me for a time with that static face he possesses, the one that seems so engaged and vigilant but relaxed in such a way I question whether he sleeps with his eyes open.

I wouldn't be surprised.

He seems the type.

I took a sip or two, staring back at his waiting eyes, tasting all the times I've often thought how futile it is. How much like ants we are, marching to the beat of organism Earth carrying us like blood cells through her veins. How futile eating is, when the calories are spent and more are needed. How futile sleep, whether I receive enough or not tomorrow I'll need more. How futile my job, how futile my laundry, how futile my insistent need for water day in and day out, and suddenly like that moment after midnight in the car I just want to keep driving and break this terrible cycle we construct in being born, and change what's happening and what happened before. To find difference, is what I crave.

I blink and remember his eyes, an eyebrow now quirked, my existentialist inner monologue splayed on my face because I'm not the actor I claim to be; I don't hide myself behind this flesh. He peels himself from the wall his hip rested on so and approaches me. I feel my heart hitch in my chest, a swift batter from one clavicle to another, straining to pump blood from its new position, rising and falling with my breath.

I want him to speak but he doesn't. His warm right hand wraps around my left, still clutching the glass, still suspended in the air. I watch his eyes, his fingers smoothing over mine.

I taste it again, futility, and my brow crinkles with displeasure. He notes the change and releases my hand, having snaked the glass from my grip.

He's backing away before I can vocalize my reasoning, that he doesn't cause this expression, he doesn't cause this futility, he doesn't cause this distaste in my senses, this unhappiness in my situation, this lack of agreement with the contents of my water.

Except as he quirks his eyebrow again and returns to the wall, my glass held and loosely swirled like wine neither of us will taste, the minerals frothing round the edges like mad hurricanes. He crosses his arms and watches me, lost of all cementing structure, stripped of that which kept me sane, and I stare back in his eyes with a dread seeping in. A dread that this nausea is more than nausea, that this constant pain isn't meager me playing pretend in my head. My body reacts in a way to tell me this repetition, this hope for change, is a plug in Einstein's direction of insanity.

Suddenly he's futile as he quirks the eyebrow and smiles with that face I'd come to accept and appreciate. Suddenly I'm cemented to the granite floor on which I stand, doomed to stare forever at the eyes that only stare back; he approaches, but never enough. He grows close, but never enough. I yearn to keep waiting, but what if waiting runs out. What if all that's here is his hip on the wall, his eyes locked with mine, and a glass of water with frozen mineral shavings swirling in abandoned loss about their confined space. And yet, as my heart clenches and sinks like a sailor to my stomach, I cannot break his gaze. I cannot turn from the futility of this place, I cannot keep driving straight on till morning and start anew with the dawning sun. I cannot abandon here, for hope that this displeasure is but a moment, but a figment of the perspective lens I stand behind, that tomorrow he'll be as before, tomorrow I'll be content with my job, eating, sleeping, laundering. Tomorrow the water will be clear and I'll breath easy, the lump in my throat a mere symptom of sickness.