Where No Shadow Stays

My heartbeat slows. Subsumed under a tidal wave of terror so potent, I can taste its sour tang under my tongue. I lay still on the table for six seconds that stretch out into eternity. In those six seconds, a reel of disjointed thoughts flick through my mind like credits at the end of an old movie.

I should’ve gotten the second cartilage piercing on my seventeenth birthday instead of waiting for my eighteenth.

Who will take care of Baba when I’m gone?

I wish I’d adopted a hamster. Everything would suck so much less if I had a hamster.