She pins her hair up tight against her scalp and wraps a scarf around it. Still, their whispers slip inside and tangle in the dark loops of her hair. She’ll brush them out at home. Silly hollow things; a turkey for tomorrow or else cake on Friday. Overlapped and overspeaking, weighing down her ears. She stoops, but just a little. Not enough that anyone will notice.

No more. I can’t… four darker words blend in amongst the others.

Later, she cuts away her hair with little scissors, wraps it in the scarf and watches as it burns away to nothing.

 Author’s note: Everything gets caught in my curly hair, so why not thoughts? Each person in a crowd becomes, to some extent, anonymous. In a flood of thoughts, it becomes impossible to pick out just one and offer help. Therefore, why would anyone want to hear them.

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“The walls are closing in again.” As if I didn’t know.

“Then go outside.” I shrugged.

“Maybe I will.” Outside, it isn’t dark or light. It simply isn’t. Infinite amounts of nothing pile up all around the walls. We keep the curtains drawn and try to make-believe we hear the sound of early evening traffic passing. The last person to leave – we forgot his name the second that he stepped beyond the doorstep – never made it back.

We press up close and try hard not to think about how soon there won’t be room for both of us.

Author’s note: This piece started off as a thought about claustrophobia; would people be desperate enough to escape a closed in space to risk moving into the unknown or the unknowable? What if the closed in space was all that was left?

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