We are on the brink. You and I. We sit on the edge of intervening space. We feel something. We feel the breeze and the panic before the waves. We feel the moment with a false sense of clarity. We see things the fuzziest when we feel the best about what we see. Even when we see naught but wanton and endless destruction; not even when we realize that we are the cause of this; because we are happy. Maybe something less fleeting as well, but happy nonetheless. We watch our world burn. Sometimes our world is your world too. Sometimes we talk to ourselves, and we are really talking to you. Sometimes I doubt that one of us exists. When I read and my phone is off. I doubt that you are there. No. I forget. I slip into another state of mind. It is not being. There is no being. There is. There is no is not because without the is, there is something else. Beyond conception. Beyond nothingness. Beyond will.


Man: The lake looks strange tonight.

Woman: I know. That's why I come here at this time. During the day it just looks like a lake surrounded by trees. At night it's all black. There is a reflection of stars, but only faintly. (Pause) But now. Now it's something else altogether. It makes me think.

Man: What happened today? What happened to us?

Woman: I'm not sure yet. It's like when you dream something so vividly that you are certain it's real, only to find yourself desperately trying to remember that same dream hours later. Ya know?

Man: I don't believe you. There's something else that you want to say. Just say it; although I'm afraid to hear it.

Woman: Oh goddammit. We know each other too well. It's a curse really, to know someone who's like you. Because you can lie to yourself, but somehow or another it always seems to know you're lying.

Man: Hmmm

Woman: He called today. And I wanted to kill him. All I wanted to do was fucking kill him. That or fuck him. Ah god I don't know. I don't want to kill him, I just want to tie him down and beat him with a pool stick for a few hours at least. Just to let him know how I felt. Ha. Ya know?

Man: Yeah. Except you'd be so happy to see him that you wouldn't be able to do anything. And the second he leaves you'd be even angrier for not letting yourself go through with it when you had the chance.

Woman: Goddammit. Ha. You're right but ahh I don't know. (Pause) I wanted to drown so bad in the shower today. I kept imagining my mom walking in and I'd be all gracefully laying down, hair across my face, me looking beautiful. Beautiful and dead.

Man: Ha yeah except in reality you'd be bloated and probably covered in crap.
Woman: Ha yeah exactly. I would look stupid even in death. There's just no way of winning.

Man: Nope. Yeah it's funny. You never actually want to kill yourself. You just want a car to hit you, something relatively quick and painless. You want to die but your will to live exceeds your will to die.

Woman: Hmm

Man: But even then, you just want to be hospitalized. You want to have some sort of religious rebirth where you realize that life is good and worth living afterall. Because from here it looks like shit. In this moment your head is tilted and your eyes are clouded. Everything looks promising, and yet you know it's bleak. You are young but you know youth is fleeting and sooner or later you'll be old and just thankful that your son still writes you once in awhile.

Woman: Life is meaningless.

Man: Life is meaningless. So why hold on to god at all?

Woman: I don't know, it's just that in my church we're encouraged to look at everything and figure out what fits.

Man: So god exists because you're allowed to think he might not? So by them giving you the freedom to question, somehow it makes personally questioning not important anymore?

Woman: No, it's not like that. I'm just saying we're taught to look for what fits. This just seems to fit for me. I don't even really know if I believe that god really started the universe, since I don't really think he's been present since. I just feel that there is something else out there. I don't know.

Man: Hmmm. Whatever. (shrugs) God, works sucks so fucking bad.

Woman: I think we should head back. I always hate being here at night.

Man: Yeah good idea.

Woman: So how's alyssa?

Man: Ehh I don't know. I don't really want to talk about it. You know, just in case it turns out to be nothing. I can't really afford to waste my time on thinking about something that may or may not be something.

Woman: God you're so intense. Maybe that's why we can only take so much of each other.

Man: And yet why we get along so well.

Woman: Ha yeah.