While sweeping, the rough bristles picking out dirt from the grate, a certain sense of self-disengagement present in the kitchen, I made a startling discovery. People thought differently of me than I thought that they thought of me. I was also glad of instant deletion, the image of a typewriter, in which one's thoughts may solidify on the page before being able to be deleted, frightening me. I was glad for this distraction.
"You're innocent. You have an innocent face. "
I stop sweeping. Innocent? I think that's the first time I've been called innocent. I've been called crazy, impulsive, Arabic, even kind, but never innocent. Never innocent. And the thing is, I can feel these thoughts making slow sense in my head, a sleepy, meandering narrative. I'm making this into a story as I think it.
"I'm sorry - innocent?"
"Yes."
"Like in the way a crooked cop looks innocent on the stand of his mate, crooked judge?"
"What?"
"How?"
"How what?"
"How am I innocent?"
"Well, you don't look guilty."
Therein lies the existential problem. It wasn't that I was innocent, it was that I wasn't anything else readily identifiable.
*
Why big and small. Why not something else?
*
"You're funny."
"Why?"
"You say strange things that I don't get."
That's it. That's why I am. Because I do, and they don't get. Funny that.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
lonely because of that sometimes, she thought. And laughed because, it was they who were innocent, not knowing that not caring makes you guilt free.
x torzilla x
Post a Comment