Are you still watching?

Is there an angst thick as drain hair behind your eyes? Are you thinking about yesterday? Are you thinking about tomorrow? Is it summer already? Are you fighting sleep like the sheen on clean skin? When did you last wash behind your ears? Did they ever figure out head transplants? Where is the self? In the body? In the brain? Are you sure you’re okay? Are those glitchy hexagons gathering in the edges of your eyes? Faces you’ve never seen but somehow know skimming the middle? Have you ever loved? Will you?

Where is your dad now? Who was the blonde-haired woman with the stormy cough? Remember how your schoolgirl face distorted in the vinyl of her skirt before they drove off? Why didn’t your mother stop him? Did she tell him you and your sister weren’t sleeping? That you stopped speaking? Did he know that anyway? Did the woman?

How about another episode?

Did you buy detergent? The one with fluffy kittens on the bottle? Isn’t it time you called your sister? Was that guy in the drugstore really looking at you today? Do you feel your fingers deep in the sheets? Will you make them glide under the lace between your legs then move quick like a wolf might tear apart a lily?

Did you clip your fingernails? Did you check behind the drapes for strangers? Don’t you think you should? Are you really that easy? Where is your sense of self? Is the self selfish? Is it an unknown thing that takes us places without our knowing? Like a silent Uber driver when you’re skull-sunk in a tarn of moonlit vodka? Are we in control then? Are we able to act? When are we? Are we? Or are we all just watching?