Untouch

You look like a photograph of yourself taken from far far away and I don't know what to do and I don't know what to say...

The dark is thinned by streetlamps, layered by leaves, and thick with a manic shouting that absorbs itself, swells and mutes and swells against the ragged slap of shoes on dirt. They are yelling rules. They are crossing lines. They are spilling out a madness that washes with the light across the curb.

A girl is wandering through the puddles, barefoot, singing softly, Fuck you, and your untouchable face... to the world in general. She thinks it strange that her feet can touch the ground, that she has feet at all. She is sure she is only her voice. She is sure she cannot be seen. The shouting spikes, distantly, and she breaks into a sprint, skidding down a squelch of mulch and across a quick hard brightness, concrete in squares, and a slope of gravel that rolls and stabs and someone must be chasing her, she's a target, officially in enemy territory now. But no sound. She's invisible. Insubstantial. She swings over a fence, edges along the concrete to an alcove in the wall. Metal steps and a fire extinguisher, slightly crooked. She sits, there, leaning against the wall, bleeding like watercolor into the dark.

Footsteps. Above her, crunching across the gravel, then to the rail of the fence. She crouches, peeks. Jerks back. The silhouette is familiar. The song is still playing in her head. Fuck you for existing in the first place... She hears him vomit over the rail.

Who am I?...

The night is consuming her whole.

Who am I?...

He coughs, then turns and walks back toward the game. She is paralyzed.

Yes, who am I?

She is crouching, hidden in the concrete. She is telling herself she's fine, and he's fine, and none of this matters. She is telling herself, Who am I? She is shaking, and she is telling herself she doesn't know why.

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