quasi fiction.

she wakes up in the box and wonders, is this it?

everyone says the life she left behind is much more routine and predictable than the one she has now. now you get to make your own decisions, they tell her. she wonders if this is really true. she thinks back over the past three days and the grandest decision she can credit herself to is a startling yet firm choice she made when she forwent a pop tart in favor of a cookie last night.

maybe life never really changes, she thinks, maybe its all just the same just different. higher stakes, more candles on the birthday cake, more wrinkles around the eyes, more hearbreak under the belt. maybe life is just one big high school all over again.

she wakes up in the box and wonders, is this it?

the letters are off the window, and from a girl who reveals little into her personal life this says a lot. the letters are off the window and a decision has been made. now what. the girl who sleeps next to the girl wakes up in the box too and wonders, is this it?

the girl thinks back to days gone by as she slathers some of that country crock shit on her bagel. she knows she shouldnt think back. it never accomplishes anything and it never helps, but nevertheless she does.

she thinks back to the times when she knew what her life was. the days when she laughed till she cried and she enjoyed the time she had with the ones she loved. she thinks about the regrets she had, the mistakes she made, the things she wishes she could erase and realizes even if she had the chance, she'd never take the bulk of it back. she thinks back to the time when the future was an ambiguous object off in the distance, so far away grasping it was unthinkable.

the girl sits in her desk with her butter-substitute-shit-covered bagel. the dark is only disrupted by the sharp glow of a desk lamp.

the girl realizes that this ambigious object way off in the distance, the future, is no longer far away. but unlike a road sign or a billboard, the future has not become clearer with decreasing distance. it remains its own illusive mystery, and rather than becoming clearer it simply adds components. components to take into account. pieces of an infinite puzzle that will never be solved because the pieces never stop coming.

she sits in her box with her shit bagel and her desk lamp and her dirty clothes and her dusty shelf and her color wheel and her exposed film and her trash can and she wonders if she should be here.

maybe this was all a mistake.

maybe it wasn't.

but maybe it was.

she sits in her box with her shit bagel and her sketchbook and her memories and her obscure dreams and her tube of wrinkle cream that says its going to make all her troubles go away and she wonders, what now?

the girl sleeping next to her took the letters off the window. the letters are off the window, that says something. a decision has been made. this is all too much for her and she, like the girl, has no idea what to do with this obscure object that is never in focus completely.

the future.

its not unlike the present and its very much not unlike the past. but it is neither the present nor the past, it is something else. unlike the shit bagel and the sketchbook and the color wheel and the desk lamp and the dirty clothes she cant put her finger on such a thing.

how scary are the things we cannot touch.