There's a hole in my head and I'm leaking out of it, just leaving a trail of memories that anyone could follow. Little boxes on the street side, each containing the detritus of a life. Each full of old pictures, old photos. Each once resembled love and now resembled things that are gone.
We took one of the pictures, of a child we don't recognize though he could be any of us. Who were you? Did you grow up happy? Or sad? Are you a child still or an old man, crooked and bent with age?
I hung you in my kitchen with care because I think someone deserves to see. And I'll never have kids because the world is ending, because I'm queer, because, because, because. But the reasons all blur together and it's kind of like having a family, really. And the hook wasn't mine, but was left by the previous tenant. In that way, it becomes an act of solidarity and community. Her hands wrap around mine in spirit as I hold you in my mind. It's a chain, unbroken. Where parents and the generations before fail us, we collapse the difference. Our elders are not ancient, but ten years, 5 years, maybe just a few precious months older than us.
The kids grow up too fast and soon our elders will be the youngest, the smartest, those most adapted. The world can change in a few seconds, you know? You blink and you missed it, and now it's already out of your hands. People whine about attention spans decreasing but they're betraying that they can't keep up. Our attention spans are fine, our minds just run faster. Too fast, you might say and you might be right. I can read a book in a few minutes and get the point with nothing more than a summary. Emotions are a tool to be manipulated by logic, with the careful practise of a fine art. I know what this tv, this book, this idea will do to me and I let it in accordingly.
We choose mastery because we choose to swim rather than sink. Knowledge permeates every facet of belief, of existence. To strive for more, for the collection of the pointless, is the highest laudable goal. The natural world is boring because its finite. Someday all its agendas will be solved and by people far smarter than I, with degrees I could never earn. So why bother? I dedicate myself to the infinite, a monument to humanity. I know every word to every movie, every fun fact, every cursed secret. If nothing is real, then what separates misinformation from information? Might as well collect it all, pocket it, bank it.
And there's a photo of a child hanging in my kitchen and sometimes I'll stop and stare at it. We'll stand there, me and a single snapshot of time, ocean or lake in the background, his smiling face and my pained one. I imagine his life. I imagine I was him. I imagine I was cared for and I was safe. I imagine what led to his box being left out in the rain, cardboard dissolving into the gutter.
No matter how fast the world moves, I'll always stop for him. Because at the end of the day, I'll still be me. And he can't move because he's just a picture. On my worst days, I'm a picture too.