We used to sit in the backseats of cars and wonder where we were going, where we weren’t going. Neither of us were going anywhere because we just sat in the backseat and waved out the windows at people we didn’t know and listened to static on the radio. Or maybe it was just the sound of our unbreathing from our pseudo-lungs, rubberband balls bringing down pieces of the ceiling with its every bounce. You said the reason I had huge knuckles was because I cracked them too much, but you don’t know science. You only know how to look at me with your desert eyes, until I feel like I’ll disappear under their swelling and receding expanses of silicon indifference. Silicon dioxide really, you said, but you still don’t know science. I’m looking out backseat windows right now, and it’s always going to be a stillborn world. Maybe we could have lived, potentially, possibly, hypothetically. We could have examined our knuckles more and waved to more passersby we’ll never see again and I could have lived without water in your desert eyes, full of prickly half-believed hopes and mirage promises. Called a fata morgana, you said. Just a trick of the light.
