propinquity
raze it's the strangest placemat the man shows me. just some words on a piece of paper dyed dark enough to pass for something meant to mop up the remnants of a meal. this passage was hidden at the end of a film, he explains. an end_credits easter egg extracted and hatched here in front of me.

i share it with a fair-weather friend who's as moved as i am. she has memories of me that shouldn't be hers. moments she wasn't alive to mark on her mind. gatherings i was privy to as an uncomprehending child. she knows the names of people she's never heard of.

she doesn't understand it herself. maybe the ghosts of all my dead relatives are holding hands and taking turns whispering in her ear. telling her what to tell me.

she asks about the river of shit i had to wade through before i left my mother's house.

"i should be over all of this," i say. "it happened a long time ago."

"you don't ever get over trauma," she says. "you just get through it."

and somewhere there's the smiling apparition of an actor who's heard these lines before, though never delivered with quite so much conviction.
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