a long ass movie

By Krista McJarrow Keller, aged 19

You’re the yolk, and the rest of us are swimming, wading in the white.

Translucent, but thick, forever bound in situ to you.

Take the negative square root of that and use it to fuel your anger the next time you look at me.

I’m sorry I didn’t call.

I’m sorry that the time I spend in misery here I can’t share with you,

that when the fat tears roll cinematically down my cheek you won’t be there to catch them,

To preserve them maternally in an old film record of your brain

In sepia

I don’t think your arms can wrap around this actress – it would seem too forced.

These things should look natural when they happen on screen.

My movie roll already has a lot of footage – I wander under the spring blooming alone

– looking contemplative, morose, artistic.

I’ll sit in my lonely chair and stare at old photos like I should, indulging in recollection, like the people in the movies always do.

I’ll pause, and look up at the planes.

Notice the freckles on a strangers’ nose in the noodle shop

But here’s the problem.

I never learnt what I really played. It’s method on another level –

I don’t even know who the person is that isn’t the character

desparately trying to exist in your dimension,

in the movie set that you and I created together, without even knowing it.

I can’t even tell you this because it would shatter your lense of the world

And I know it already has cracks.

So instead I keep it,

in a roll of tape like a worm,

coiled in my small intenstine,

eating at the walls.