New York Bleeding into Maine – Lily Bix Daw

September 10, 2025

My name is Diamond. I slept with my Infinity Pillow.  

Diamond noticed in the bathroom that the sound of a woman putting on pantyhose sounds like the stringing of an instrument. She couldn’t remember what she was trying to remember last night but in the hotel, she felt dim and super alert, like a Diamond Walnut, her namesake.

There is no shortage of toothpaste in this hotel, Diamond thought.  The same thing I’m living is what you’re doing but mine comes out weird as fuck. Hissing. 

Everything I thought was true was false, everything I thought was cringe was based, everything I thought was love was crying, everything I thought was love and thus thought false was just a girl walking down the streets, swinging her hips, having people write songs about her. Diamond envisioned her thoughts in the toilet bowl. Let me tell you a story, she wordlessly said to the porcelain. 

On Christmas Day walking down Main Street the store selling Home Depot sized buckets of sugared popcorn had a caged squirrel, black. It was named Cartier Eagle. One day the department store left the back store room door open and the squirrel escaped onto the Throgs Neck Bridge, where it witnessed a Great War between new and old things. Amsterdam or York or something. The fighting in Manhattan was tragic and historic and the squirrel was like Was there a euro war here? He mourned for the pedestrians and the cars in his brief moments of freedom between the Avenue Carpet and his sudden death, a quick Chevy Tahoe blunting. 

Throckmorton means drain town, which is where he went, bits and pieces down into the sewer system. Later, in a blown Prius blowing blue smoke on the Merritt Parkway, a man named Paul Dispensor was distracted by a genetic anomaly, a piebald squirrel on the median strip, and caused a 6 car pileup. I’m telling you this because I saw it. Thought Diamond to the glass of water. I regret not telling you sooner, she continued. 

Back home, behind a yellow Fiat in the CVS drive thru a squirrel was struck by lightning watching the people waiting on a fat Big Mac. 

At home I can only think of names. This parking lot always glistens like it was just sprayed with something. I look at its sheen under the fluorescent light and I do think I understand left and right and Push versus Pull. Everyone wants the five dollar McChicken meal. Welcome thank you. 

Behind a yellow Fit from Texas now. Contemplating firearms and wanting to take my harmony sovereign into him. 

Valuable personal property insurance, musical instruments, cameras, artwork, jewelry. Nothing is more than playable. Not particularly. What’s my action, does it get pretty high? A female is doe. 

The car shuddered as Diamond and her boyfriend drove past Colleyville Hill and the desaturating light of the sun was fading onto the sky turning it a flat shade of blue. They followed 5 cars in a line, each glowing red every few seconds or so as the leader decided to brake. The periodic road wound through scrubby lines of pine and hemlock and some dead openings revealed sun bleached swamp trees. Sometimes swarms of oncoming traffic blinded them, passing by like alien caravans. Like caravans of aliens. The old Honda’s headlights were a comforting shade of orange, none of that LED bullshit. They spread out into a natural glow ahead of them. Creating the shadows which were purple now, the sky a deeper blue, the trees now an unidentifiable gloom of black jagged shape. And one star over the horizon, the first one tonight’s said. He was mad at her first but she was quiet last and he asked, “..are you ok?” “Mmhm,” Diamond replied, not trying to be bitchy but actually empty inside and only able to make sounds. He was silent for a while and then did a soft exhale laugh through his nose with a closed mouth and she didn’t look at him even. She just kept watching the car in front of them as it went red and white and red and white and the sky stayed blue. 

Back at the hotel, an entire sun’s timeover, Diamond gets up, goes to the bathroom, gets prepared for the faux day, leaves bathroom and litter in the room and then ends up crawling onto the king sized bed fully clothed, draped over the bedspread, curling into fern shape because she can’t find her phone and the act of looking for it deactivated the medication coursing inside her braincells. Her phone buzzed quietly under the pillow she rested her head on, and Diamond felt relieved that situationally it made sense what she was doing.   

I am not a passionate educator, she thought, while reading soap emails.

When her body fell asleep more, Diamond got up and looked for her hat inside his car. Rain misted down on the hair which she had carefully coiffed while wet with his mother’s ancient crimping tool. It lay limp on her forehead and smelled of burnt rubber as she searched through piles of empty trash and cigarette butts. The floor of the drivers seat had a hole worn straight through it by his big foot. Diamond felt like she was a small component of something losing its shine. 

Her provincial provider, a young foal, was like a lanced breath, a lanced belief and Serena was like a cascade of chimes. 

I’m smoking too many cigarettes, Diamond thought.

I’m nervous too you know? Why don’t you bring me medicines and give me that new skincare cream. It’s trashy. It’s trashy baby. You’re trashing me. It’s trashy like on TV. Diamond was listening to a favorite song of hers that was only favorite after a certain combination of things. 

Then next up at the strip mall she got the wrong color on her nails at the salon and thought, badly, 

How did the gory Vietnamese man perceive me to give me these kind of ugly nails? 

I’m nervous too you know, I’m scared too. She thought nervously at the Vietnamese man. 

Unable to speak, he still wanted to exercise his First Amendment rights and thus wrote on his truck, This truck identifies as a Prius. 

“I identify as an attack helicopter,” Diamond said out loud. 

“Countryside down,” the man said back. “Will you tell me a joke?” She asked him. 

Four people sat down at a table and watched someone play. What kind of games were he been playing? What was he playing?

Five people sat down at a table to watch an old son play. Three of them ate, one was recording. One was in pain and watching. Two were in pain. Four were in pain. Five were in pain. The snow outside fell and became slush that squeaked beneath eBay boots. The thing in the fire was keeping on, keeping going down below. One of them said the way to survive up here is always to have something in the fire. Some thing in the fire. What is the thing inside it? He sent this to her via direct brain connection. 

Spawn what does spawn do, Diamond shot back in her mind. 

Diamond’s friend Crystal was good at putting her brain thoughts on pieces of paper. Diamond had always been staunchly against this practice, as once outside the body, the thoughts became words which existed, skinless vulnerable children and the responsibility to protect them felt too great. Diamond respected Crystal’s decision thoroughly however because Crystal always ate the papers. 

This afternoon they sat together by the window, at the big table with the leaf, and Crystal was writing her letter since she had to go to work that night. 

Dear God, 

Im going to work tonight with my Mommy who has big breasts and prone. She on the table when I thought that she usually protects me. Sometimes not, she leads me astray a some. They said sin is everywhere and you cannot turn away from evil. I am going to a place that has that kind of dirt and carpets which are like being on 25I-NBOMe in a funhouse with double sided mirrors surrounding you on all sides. I will be purple and mottled like the drippings in the pan at Christmas and be the lacy cast of water reflecting or like an omental cake of someone sick.

Dear God I am sorry for sinning like this for money. I bought bullshit on Amazon today like an air purifier and I’m sure all the comments were paid and fake but I thought I was doing a good at the time and I also used money to buy other things I needed or wanted and then I worried that I shouldn’t be spending money because I’m so poor. Can’t spend that funhouse money on things like that. Now I’m going to pretend to party for money naked and it’s nobody’s choice but mine God I’m so sorry. Is this ok? It’s not but nothing is? I think I get you and I’ll try to be good but you said what? Nobody is? Be yourself? Ok. I will try. Thank you. I love you God!

Crystal balled the paper up and ran sink water under it until it was soft enough to swallow. “I pray for myself and us all!” said Crystal to Diamond as she picked up her bags and stepped over the threshold. She got into her car and left. Diamond turned the heat off and faced the wall.