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routine
every morning my roommate turns the bathroom light on and i turn it off. it’s the routine we comfort ourselves with before we waste time brewing coffee and agonizing over how orange the egg yolks are. then it’s my job to close the curtains before we remember the world has been flicked off its axis. that easy. nobody wants to see the happy arms carrying groceries as if all is well. sometimes she cries or i do but neither of us look. i think we wish the air tasted like something other than summer. fear, or dread, or at least something sour. instead it’s mostly floral, so we shut the window tight. by noon, the walls start to sweat and our hair sticks to our necks. i think about what color you’d call pool water. my roommate suggests cerulean, but then i realize i can’t actually picture what color a pool is. at 5:00 we meditate by sitting on the couch and scrolling Instagram. it’s a mix of bathing suits and blood and we can’t tell which is more disturbing. when the sky runs out of light, we retreat to our rooms and i go to sleep early. it’s always hard to doze off. every hour i wake up thinking there’s a ghost, and when i realize no one is actually there, i’m disappointed every time.
