first time trying to dodge a shark and then a short boy curly haired smily faced comes up to me and tries to ask whilst stumbling if I could be his safety net because he wants to try too

I tell him this is only my first time and have not the faintest idea of what I’m getting at and that he would sooner die than live with me by his side

and then he tells me of all his accidents all his broken limbs in attempts to be sporty and brave unbothered perhaps ignorant even

along those lines pity follows and he asks me to have tea at this tea place where they supposedly have the best tea i’ve ever had

now i don’t even like tea but there I go - we go - off to the place of magic tea
and on the way there the boy or man or boy utters into an ATM — discovers he cannot pay for the tea he was so eager to get with me

the request to have the tea at his house follows - which is so close we won’t even notice the walk there he says

5 minutes and there I stand now only a doorstep between me and the demarcated space before me

I go in and find some cats - a white interior to match them - cold tiles and light leather couches and entering my nose an aroma of weeds of some sort

distorted air and his despair transferring into my mind and body as i sat there sinking into the worn-out leather

now as we had established I don’t even like tea but there I sat and sipped like my life depended on it
while he talked of family and the constant despair seeping into his body with every passing year he spent on this earth

his curly hair - the kind that falls as though it should never be touched or else gets ruined - the kind that seems innocent and fair but distracts you from the fact that the body wasn’t quite as connected to the brain - fell slightly over one of his eyes

his mother never listened to what he really had to say and so when he grew into the young man that he was he grew into such frustration he took a knife and pointed it at the poor woman

so much for gratitude

my curse being the ability to understand both both the efforts - the tries of the latter and then being misunderstood by the creatures that made you that grew you fed you fertiliser and yelled when you meant well and the corners too small to breathe that you’re backed into when no ears seemed big enough to listen

but then there I sat - in the middle again - surrounded by those poor cats - the tea - the aroma’s - the awful stories getting worse with every word entering my poor ears

and there I saw the knife block on the kitchen counter and all I thought was nod and smile - do the thing you do best - understand

and then his tears flooding his cheeks - his neck - his forearms - for my understanding gave him space to release the built-up pressure that had been boiling up inside him

the brief intermission of the constant suffering of the loneliness we have all felt at some point or another in life

my nods and yeses found me back - at some point - to that doorstep
that border between the safe world - the grand unwritten spaces and deathly singularity that lives within the homes of the misunderstood

I mumbled my way to the other side

out there without drinks I dislike - doors that seem to be coming at you
without knives staring at you from the saddest countertop I’ve ever encountered

-D.