???: Archive

Dec 28, 2010

i like writing drabbles about nothing man YEAHH

“I don’t give a shit about anything,” she tells me, smoke dancing out from between her teeth. What she really says is different, yes, but I know what she means, and what she means is that she doesn’t give a shit about anything. Everything she does says that: the pants she hasn’t changed out of for three days, the greasy hair flat on her head, her swollen eyes. She hasn’t bothered to doll herself up. It’s because she simply doesn’t give a shit.

It’s okay; I’m no better. So I tell her, “I don’t give a shit about anything either.”

And she chuckles in that way smokers do, what with the abrupt little coughs. Her subsequent smile stumbles a bit and she looks elsewhere. She studies the snow all around us, swinging her feet back and forth. I feel the vibrations in my thighs and warn her that she’ll break the bridge - all kidding, of course, since she’s a stick.

“Sorry,” she says, but I hear her reveal, “I don’t give a shit.”

“It’s okay,” I answer, but I tell her, “I don’t, either.”

We sit there, bold trespassers, and admire how the world looks on land that isn’t ours, how it shines differently under the moon, how the snow crunches louder than usual under our feet, how even the sky is a stranger. The back of her head is pressed between her shoulder blades, the short hair dangling behind her as she looks at the star-freckled abyss. She flicks her cigarette and the gray ashes drop off the bridge, hitting the ice-creek.

“I want to become something great,” I confess. I see her mouth twitch into the faintest of smiles. “You know? I want to change something. Anything out there.”

“What would you change?” she asks, bemused.

“Maybe I would change the chemicals in your brain,” I answer, poking her. “Maybe I would make you happy.”

“It’s all artificial,” she tells me.

“Maybe I would change your mind, and you would see it differently.”

She takes a drag from her cigarette and looks away from me, shaking her head.