On late nights, I would go up to the college library and leave my dog in the car. I remember parking my car, walking the empty sidewalks in my sweatpants, opening loud doors, and taking memorized footsteps to the same section. This rush of fear and anticipation would come over me as I would slide my finger along the tops of the pages of these massive books and then slide them off of the shelf towards me. I would cradle them close to my chest until I found the same little spot on the floor I liked to connect with while I thumbed through books full of photos of autopsies. I imagined every single person’s life and how they led it. How many times they wondered how they were going to die and never once thought it was the way it was and that there would be photos of it for some lonely girl to take comfort in as she wrapped her mind around death as tightly as she could suffocating it as if to say she was in charge of it all and then hand over the control once she released her grip. My sensories were always overwhelmed by the silent orange color of the library lighting and the echoed collision of answers to every curiosity I had. I would take breaks to go back to my car and walk my dog and then go back in and pick up where I had left off. It was always easy to remember the last image I saw, and easier to go back to once my dog and some fresh air gave me a dose of life and untangled me from the story of the ones in the photos reminding me I was alive and to be present. Shortly thereafter someone threatened me in what should have removed any ounce of safety I had left remaining at this point in my life, “don’t be shocked if I run over you one day, put it in reverse, and do it again. I could confuse you for a speed bump.” I remember them making the movements to go along as if I had become some concrete lump in the parking lot intended to slow drivers down. For what it was worth, they had me feeling as if I were nothing more than that and maybe that was the whole point. All I imagined as I watched lost hatred pour out of their mouth run by drugs that were destroying them was the empty library parking lot I left my dog in, this one photo from the autopsy books of a man on a saw table with his body cut in half, and me just lying lifeless in my torn pajamas as the mosquitoes and mayflies swarmed to the light poles overhead and the reality that I was not a speed bump and rather someone who mattered coming one last breath too short for them. 

I want to dig deep tonight. I want to process why I cannot sit through a concert without hours’ worth of tears lining up for their big moment and me threatening them one by one. I envision them like individual innocent kiddos in their swimsuits waiting their turn to go down a twenty-second water slide after standing hours in the Texas sun. Concrete staircases with minimal shade, other options of places to be cooled off, and likely better ways of spending their time. Instead, they climb these stairs at an agonizing pace, some in turquoise, some in black, some with print, and others just solid, each coming from a different home with a different background and stories to tell, but at the moment when they reach the top, they share the same desire and want…to jump in, wait for the lifeguard to nod their head and give them the go and to get lost in some careless flow of water and shot out with force at the end. My tears line up the same. My emotional lifeguard never gives the nod to go but a few slip out just the same, and then the whistle gets blown and the slide gets closed. My tears turn around and walk back down the stairs, find reprieve from the pain elsewhere, and survive in their polka dot bikini while they prepare for their turn never knowing when it will be. Little do they know if they show up first thing tomorrow, they may slip on down before the lifeguard even notices they are there. 

After the concert, I stared out the corner window from the 7th floor as I watched a city starting to fall asleep. A moth on the outside window spent its time watching inward and I wondered how much outward as well. Did it notice the perfect straight-line view we shared? How about how the stop lights at each intersection don’t all turn the same color at the same time? Why not? No one was using them anyway. Could we just make it make sense to me for the night? Was the moth even alive? Did it die while sharing the same view I was and its legs just never released their grip? Do moths cry? And why the fuck did this guy just park his scooter and continue to walk as far as I could see down this street? Did he seriously just want to park it next to someone else’s so it wouldn’t be lonely? Or did he just say fuck it, it is windy and rainy and I have legs, I am going to walk the remainder? I have no clue. Sounds like something I would think about and do. I have never ridden an electric scooter before, which is why I also did not have an answer to why he took a photo of it once he parked it. Perhaps the app requires this. I could hear these people below, sometimes one person distinctly. If I screamed in this room, if I let out what I was holding in, would they hear me just the same? Do they even know I am up here looking down on their lives they sloppily spread across the sidewalks? I observed how they never look and check for safety at crosswalks and how the men walk so securely alone at night while small groups of women look around and walk close together as if a man who wanted to separate them couldn’t with just a few selective words instilling the right kind of fear and dissolving the love holding these women so close. I felt like I was watching my life, I was the man who walked too quickly, the woman who talked too loud, the guy who pulled his suitcase carelessly and continued to walk as it lay on its side, the offices with lights left on and monitors continuing to play a memory slide of photos for no one to see, the homeless boy who sat with his knees to his chest and bent his arms and placed his hands on his head in the rain, the empty pizza box that served its purpose and did not quite fit in the trashcan, the crosswalk lines with a systematic purpose people walked right over, and the moth that did not flinch when it was faced with a disruptive vibration caused by the hand of another. I never saw a speed bump. I knew I was right.