Free Trial – Amina Snoot

August 21, 2023

i dream in mercury, floating, swimming, endless poison around me, but having a good time anyway.

he visits me, an exotic cat, a princess, a rare flower, when i least expect it. together we drink moonlight, wash the floor with it, waltz over the reflection, infinity stretching out like a carpet of truth and consequence. through the grapevine and vaporware we clamber and claw, vie and jaw.

i press send a thousand times in my dreams to wake up to find my messages unsent, unintelligible, scrabble written after pulling an all-nighter. he gets them all, though, always. a code talker, a mathematician, an anthropologist. he says he wants to make me a star.

i show him the cracks between my guts and cartilage and gristle and bone and his words fill them up perfectly, stopping the drip of digital blood and irl boredom. his fingers are soft and warm, indecisive, trailing from landing to landing, keeping all the parts of me just together enough. we spin ourselves into a yarn, frenzied, stretching and screaming further than anyone can see. no one ever understood the mechanics of this, the car careening around corners, hairpin, circling the drain, but they could all see what i could not, what was to happen next.

they said i’ve got tuna can brain; i can only see what’s in front of me. the edges blur and fade and close in around me until eventually i don’t even notice them. they visit and address me from outside my shell, my situational home, just dropping in to offer a piece of reality that bounces right off my metallic blinders. they tried to warn me.

together we embrace the factory farm of ideas, us alone, in a sea of people, in each other’s personal space, surrounded but entirely isolated, left to our own devices. it is good this way. this is the only way it works. 

we ha ha and hehe and spend our days: amex gold slut core, juice fees, jelly-filled and stupid, pool floats, don’t complicate an easy thing, why are you worried, probably certified, definitely haunted, getting back in the closet, shower, bed, washing machine, tearing things down from tip to tail, i’m a good girl, you’re a good guy, we could use some new blood in here, lasagna, cioppino, seafood linguine.

we laugh and he tells me i’m making it all up, relax baby, i miss when things were good between us. besides, what’re some lies between friends. we break like waves until we break like porcelain, crazed, a pile of dust where life once was. there’s always less left over at the end than you think. 

he takes for himself the best part, as he always does, leaving behind forever in an instant. the asymmetry crawls under my skin and mocks me. alluvion switches to avulsion. sometimes you’re made to do without the things you thought you needed, and you cant leave or escape, you just have to see it out for the rest of your days. we had possessed each other, but now we’re just ghosts haunting our own lives.

i wonder if he hears his mom’s voice saying don’t worry baby, it’s not your fault, bad things happen to good guys. he tells everyone i was being a real bitch to him. i resolve to never waste another thought on what is fair, and what is not.