MIND

WRITE WITH ME

this is updated in accordance with my writing
this story begun on jan. 5, 2026

I
She decided to stay in one of those hotel rooms built for ruminating one’s life, with a wooden lattice-worked window overlooking the plaza and continually peeling wallpaper. The purple lampshades cast the night inside, shawling onto the room and distracting its resident from their flickering, bulbous yellow peeking shyly underneath. She supposed she wasn’t the one to stay; they nor her had expected to find something Worthy.

Outside, the sky was gathering dusk in heapfuls. R tread upon the single surviving portion of carpet, back and forth, back and forth between the lamp and the opposite wall. She was thinking, a rarity truly. Usually she left that for the wavering minutes before sinking into a sommerlust dream. The room was small, so small she could feel the magnifying glass in her open leather suitcase glaring at her along with her pile of clothes. The interiors were carved with signs of precious wear. But small meant safe and spacious enough to think about the likelihood of each of her looming futures, ever nearer, ever nearer. She was not to back down.

She was not sure if she is running with her demons or her angels, or whether such a distinction is merely enchantment, the kind that blurs our worlds over and everything looks to be upside down. Now she lies still as her taxidermies, except her eyes were meandering and not wide, her irises a strange tint of soot, and her clawing hands squinched tight around her ribs. She exhaled. She’d made all that up. She wasn’t tumbling down and forecasting rain indoors. No, she was safe and wanted briefly to feel occupied. She needed a new companion for her loneliness, perhaps a hitman for hire.

The trouble with R is that her loneliness was forlorn, clouded in a starlit dress, chewing on oysters and clattering pearls into the lake of her heart. Her loneliness had breath. It whispered and sang ever stranger melodies; it morphed and drank its tears and changed some more. It was a creature, it was her, but also not her for it affected her like the object in the mirror. Of course, the bathroom tiles glared innocently back at R as she deciphered her own mosaic portrait underneath the dimming light. She wondered if the sad winged creature of loneliness might do with a hug. But these were the thoughts that spurred like an old engine and then died. It was night: the stars iridescently, irresponsibly careened into earth. She closed her eyes, and died.

II
She looked into those canine eyes and wild mushroom brows and she thought, not human. Her knees tugged her backwards, but something was behind her, a long shadow, fluttering dark winged things, and she fell into a world she had always pictured but never known.