The World Is Not Flat, Columbus.

I stood in the rain, letting it drip down my face, intertwine with the threads of my hair, soften the calloused leather of my hands. I stood in the shower, waiting for the water to get so hot that it would numb the tender skin of my arms. It's best to cry while in the shower, because it's easiest then to pretend that you're not. As I stood in the shower that day I felt what it's like to entirely drain one's tear ducts. But I'll never tell - you'll never know.

It was raining that candlelit evening two months and three days ago. You came and met me at my car with an umbrella - but who thinks about umbrellas when you're making the tiny hairs on my neck stand on end? We sat on your floor, our backs against your bed, and I told you that your picture frames were crooked. You asked me what life would be like if there were only straight lines.

Your room was decorated in shades of red. You apologized for the untidiness, for the small degree of chaos, for the black lint in the carpet. You picked nervously at it as you looked back at me, waiting for that word of encouragement, the smile that let you know you were forgiven for the laundry basket sitting in the center of your floor. I told you everything was alright, since your red sheets smelled of you when I buried my face in them.

The doctor's office was decorated in shades of white, screaming superficial sterility through the twice daily windex-ed window. The woman to whom I was supposed to release my life's information was overly tan and left faint yellow tobacco stains on my documents as she gave them back to me. I told her I liked her pink nails that could inflict significant damage to an unsuspecting patient. I thought her occupation choice was appropriate - when she simultaneously contracted both skin and lung cancer, she wouldn't have far to go. Her fellow cubicle-mates just may care enough not to chip her nails during treatment.

She gave me back the pieces of paper that would one day allow my medical insurance to scoff at me when I asked for assistance, and sent me on my way to the rectangular white box whose atmosphere was intended to comfort the hurting. I couldn't help but think of the red tape that framed the lily that I made you, and of the red blanked that ended up on your floor.

The bathroom in the doctor's office was equally white - perhaps even more so. As I lay face down on the bleached tile I realized quite tragically that the world could never consist solely of straight lines. Even now the floor was warping beneath me, taking the preconceived notion of 180 degrees and bending it beyond recognition. And as I stared into the swirling vortex of the toilet I felt my skin stretching and pulling across my stomach, such that it would never be flat again.

I left the bathroom newly decorated in shades of red. And I left the doctor's office that disguised murder with a white lab coat.

Two months and three days ago I lay awake listening ot the sound of your breathing. Tonight the drumbeat of your heart pounded in my veins. I woke up to kicking and screaming inside of me. As I lay there alone in sheets that didn't smell of you, I wondered what it was like to be that little one that swam in the world that was my belly. If it cried I'd never know - it would never tell me.

And dear Bobbie, nor could I ever tell you.

I stood in the rain, disregarding the umbrella, because who think of umbrellas when they're waiting in front of a death clinic for the one who can make the hair on the back of their neck stand on end?

And I stood in the shower, weeping, because where better else to cry?

And I buried my face in the red sheets that smelled of you, because with you, the world could never be straight again.