pop culture of my heart

Maria is leaned over the rail to the lake in the park.

Her mind is fogged with strange, unsettlingly familiar and yet unknown - to her - thoughts.

She only knows she should be here, for something.

The cold and humidity almost a insignificant detail while Maria keeps on trying to figure out what are those thoughts (memories?) about and if they…mean something to her. If they have something to do with her.

She doesn't understand why but she barely moves when she hears the footsteps.

It's so, they are so…comfortably familiar in a way. But also…uncomfortable, just… a little bit.

They distantly remind Maria of the monsters, but just distantly; if it were them, the footsteps wouldn’t come alone.

She doesn’t turn right away, though, her gaze sliding over the fog floating over the still water - oddly enough, she can hear it moving. Her mind feels comfortably sluggish, even when something feels…wrong, like a chill wind brushing across an open wound.

A shift on the ground, like a footwear scuffing across the concrete makes Maria’s breath catch in her throat.

Slowly, she loosens up again, sighing deeply before turning.

Maria just tilts her head to the side, though, turning her face to the newcomer.

The woman stops beside her.

She looks sick as if she was about dying. But her posture was somewhat…firm enough.

Like some sort of out of body experience. As if in the latency period of her illness before things got worse.

Maria keeps watching the other just breathing, her delicate hands curled around the rails.

Something like a scene…from a…movie? Pops in her head, a flimsy image.

Maria blinks, confused, retreating her upper body a little.

The other woman turns to her.

“It's confusing, isn’t it?” She frowns slightly, eyes distant. Hands tightening around the bars.

Then back at Maria.

Maria raises an eyebrow.

“Who…?” She lets out, defensively, stepping back, just one foot, the heel of her boot scraping the concrete, a startle reminder of her physicality, just a slight move away before nodding, slowly, as if something dawns on her. “Yeah, I guess…it is…”

The other woman nods as slowly, but her eyes shift again, slowly back to the horizon.

The brunette still watching ahead says:

“Please, don't let love guide you wherever it demands…” she says it very quietly, voice cracking at the word love, the words turning small, a soft vibration of air. “Maybe not…love, but…the desire to be loved at…whatever costs.”

The woman is staring at her scarred hands, as if talking by experience, by experienced pain.

Maria doesn't understand any of it. Doesn’t know what the woman is talking about but nods at the words, at the woman.

Something about it…feels like wisdom.

Like a real teaching. No matter how her body feels like refusing that with every fiber of it.

The woman turns to her once more, smiling sadly, a barely there smile, a twitch of the side of her lips.

She raises her hand once, weakly, as if to touch, to comfort, in the direction of Maria's face, even though it didn’t surpassed the line of her waist, but it falls like weary resignation.

“I’m sorry you have to…” the woman says, pressing her lips, her eyebrows digging in pity or compassion before she looks away, her thin legs in floral, dusty pijamas dragging her away.

Maria swallows hard, stepping forward to follow, pressing her lips in apprehension and anxiety but she only raises her arm while the woman disappears in a fogged corner.

It feels asphyticating, this experience, like watching a mirror…of your self of years ago, of a lifetime ago.

Like one self that isn’t your self anymore.

Maria takes a deep breath of the freezing cold fog, her lungs hurting a little.

What was she doing?

She looks at the fog over the lake.

Ah.

“James…”

She practically forgets everything else as she comes back to her spot, bent over the rail.

He’s coming.

He’s coming for her.

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