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You tell yourself: 'you're ok.'
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The round alarm rings and the broken shower head pours, work starts at the same time as yesterday. (and the day before) You're eight minutes late to work. You're always eight minutes late to work and your boss thinks it's because of your child, so says nothing. You work quickly, you work quietly.
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The keyboard tapping is louder than you.
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No one has ever seen you outside of work, but you seem nice enough, so they accept you (minus group hugs). Guys at work, they flirt, pull at your hair and stand close enough to smell the perfume pulsing off of your breasts. It doesn't matter if your face is a stop sign, because the boyfriend you say you have, has never shown face nor muscle here, nor has he ever called. Not even on Valentine's day.
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That's because he's fictitious. Based off the man you love, that loved everything about you, but your personality. You've not given your phone number out in two years and you tell them your cell phone never rings because you get no reception here.
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(that's partly true)
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You hate to lie, but the truth's a viper winding up your calf. And when the careless manager asks you why you look depressed, leaving your eyes wide, a mouth full of thumb tacks; You realize, for the first time, how you hate him.
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At some point, someone weaves a joke in your direction. Trying to smile, you laugh instead, realizing it sounds a lot like cardboard tearing. You don't like how close that rubs truth on the litmus paper of your face, but the cat is clawing at the bag again, to get out.
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The joke ends with the guy calling you 'kid'. Bristling, you tell him 'ok grandpa'. It hurts him, watch while his face becomes quicksand, while your own face reflects back to you, from his convex shades. You smile with a bitter root wedged under your tongue, you hate him too.
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And if he thought you were dandelions before, now he thinks you're weeds. Compares you to a woman that is fourty-five, and how you look the same age. You're in your twenties.
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He's an asshole. And you know this. You tell him, too.
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But somehow, after that, your lips seal like a vacuum and your voice is a part of mythology now, that no one can prove.
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Inside your head,
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you're a standing woman in a glass fish tank. The walls are higher than you, they will always be higher than you. Water is pooling at your feet, and it's warm so you try to acclimate. While the clock starts napping as the day winds down, the water rises. You're choking on the inside, as it seeps into your nose. You can't pull your neck back any further, and your tipsy toes are stretched all the way up. Trying to breathe.
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The glass is so smooth your hands look like suction, pressed against it, if someone were looking from the outside. But they're not. By the time you reach home, there's one bubble left in behind your lips, and your hair floats like angels in space.
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Walking in your front door, you wonder where the bleach is,
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or some rope.
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When the water fills completely, spills over the edge of the glass tank, no one will ever hear you scream;
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they never heard you scream anyway.
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