It was only later that the map’s breath could be heard. Apart from lungs, from wind. A beating.

THE INTERNET, that strange and uncertain frontier, was the perfect kind of fertile. It occurs to me now to wonder if the seeds I was dropping in fact led me there, pieces of the secret parts of me as they were, minions of the map that lived (lives, still) in the molecules of my more malleable parts. It occurs to me to wonder, but at the moment this salivating and breathy map of mine wants us to focus on our presence before the vast expanse. On our expanding ribcage, the hot pressure of a rapidly swelling flesh balloon.

We allow the glass to dull the edges a bit, is how we keep going. I tuck my tiny rectangle away because when given the choice I prefer not to be a caricature and am rewarded with more opportunities to be horrified at myself. The man, for example, vigorously emptying the contents of his stomach onto the floor of the car I’m about to get onto only very slightly alters the trajectory of my evening. The following is a spoiler: I do not make sure he gets home safely. I do not make sure he has a home to get to, safely or otherwise. I only just now, at the time of this writing, hope that he had someone to make him rinse his mouth out before he went to bed. I didn’t hope it then because I didn’t have room to. If I let those type of hopes bubble up when they wanted to, I’d fall over. I’d overflow. Seated a distance I judge to be too far away for vomit to splash, I listen to two other men discuss in great detail and at great volume the ripped-ness of a third (absent) man. He works out a lot, has very little body fat. He eats only brown rice and vegetables. They repeat these facts to each other, over and over, in as many different ways as they can think of. It’s not a lot of different ways. Finally I have to look, I have to know the source of this inanity. But I don’t, really, because first I see that one of them has a wound on his leg that is openly bleeding. Another spoiler: I do not say, You’re… bleeding. You are bleeding blood. Kind of a lot.  I do not think, BLOOD. I am not moved to action. No. I think, THIS is what I get for trying to “be present.” This is what the present has to offer.

But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.
Haruki Murakami

We had to take headshots at work, and everyone’s photographed selves turned out a little denser than their alive selves. So I didn’t mind too much about that, but the beginnings of lines around my eyes were unsettling. I’m not actually going to live forever.