And I did not stop crying! That entire summer— I cried into my magnesium carbonate, into dainty flowered foods, in jars and plane water and down broken-out cheeks. In the bathroom of a Thai food restaurant; after all, I was a captive keeper of the key, held hostage to witness rolling tantrums and issued a challenge: if you get upset, it’s your fault. But I was born upset! It didn’t help my lamenting— there was so much more to cry about!
Until I cut my legs on the scrub near the decommissioned dump. That day meant everything to me. My dear friend and I rode through the streets for, at last, the one true beach day. We tore a chicken leg apart. I clutched broken glass to my chest, tearing some, but not enough, flesh. I’m still covered in blemishes as my membrane tries to expel what was certainly a potent trash-salt.
I couldn’t run from what I’d wanted to. A proposition: what if we conspire? Just pretend that nothing is anything but what it is now, and run away? And run more; I can glitter and you can shriek. Global gastric galling. I tried to explain this dream across multiple mediums, but was not believed.
There lies a nondeterministic difficulty in trying to confer with someone who sees you a mirror against which to beat and laugh, smack and accuse. It was, in the way that some needlessly dramatic, tiring, and horrifically painful things are, a very boring summer. I think I fell in love. The whole thing was so sad. That said, it ended and I got my legs back and could rummage through trash, content and eternally drained of joy.
In the time since! I have made vessels into which to cry and pus. I’ve hatched my glass plot and met people. I eat most meals in the bath, and I spent a debonair evening watching Medea (she did not stop crying!) with every friend free. I will never be happy again. I ride my small-wheeled bike up a hill over a bridge onto an island and stretch and I think, in the forgetfulness of it all, I’ve accidentally donated my favorite novel. I’m replacing it with four separate volumes containing all of its parts, the case for which has been sloppily signed by the author in sharpie and, the surface being smooth, is rubbing away.
This vessel is the successor and sovereign of the Big Gulp Lachrymatories.