[broadcast memory] i took that hard, but i buried it
The lights are dim. Nearly every row of the lecture hall is filled with half-grown students just like you, lanky and awkward. There's a projection on the screen.
You're sitting next to your friend, your oldest friend (or so they say, you argue a lot, more these days than when you were younger and weren't taking the medicine yet), who's busy scrawling down notes, head bent, as the teacher drones on.
[trees don't heal from their wounds. they compartmentalize their damage, try to contain it through barriers to keep the decay from spreading, various walls of defense--]
[but when all but the fourth wall fail the tree's made hollow]
[a rotted interior while the tree still lives]
You're typing out the words on your laptop, as dutifully as ever, as dutifully as always but your gaze wanders toward the ribbons in your friend's hair and you find yourself thinking strangely, so strangely, how nice it might be if she'd untie them sometime, let down those heavy, pretty locks, let them go free all the way down her back. Further, and then you wonder how it might be to touch them yourself, touch her--
And then you're horrified at your own sinfulness.
You're sitting next to your friend, your oldest friend (or so they say, you argue a lot, more these days than when you were younger and weren't taking the medicine yet), who's busy scrawling down notes, head bent, as the teacher drones on.
[trees don't heal from their wounds. they compartmentalize their damage, try to contain it through barriers to keep the decay from spreading, various walls of defense--]
[but when all but the fourth wall fail the tree's made hollow]
[a rotted interior while the tree still lives]
You're typing out the words on your laptop, as dutifully as ever, as dutifully as always but your gaze wanders toward the ribbons in your friend's hair and you find yourself thinking strangely, so strangely, how nice it might be if she'd untie them sometime, let down those heavy, pretty locks, let them go free all the way down her back. Further, and then you wonder how it might be to touch them yourself, touch her--
And then you're horrified at your own sinfulness.