“When did the future stop being a promise and become a threat?”

“Where did you read that?” she asks. She doesn’t wait for my answer. She never does. She pretends that her question is enough to show that she cares. “You haven’t seen the sun for so long that your skin is getting pale.” She touches my arm. The skin is so white it’s almost transparent; blue veins loop beneath and I can almost see my cells on their 3 minute commute.

Three minutes, I think, and then back to start… twenty times an hour, 480 times a day; never stopping. We do the same, I think. Our routes just take longer.

“Did you hear what I said?” she asks, I nod. It’s become a reflex.

“People are all up in arms about UV this and melanoma that, but the truth is…”

‘The truth is’; it’s not worth pointing out that her version of the truth is just the ghost of a lie. Where did I read that? Was it a song, perhaps? Or my own thought? They all get muddied up these days. Perhaps they always did, there’re just more thoughts, songs, and words to get muddied with each passing day; 480 circulations.

Her lips are still moving. She’s beautiful, but not in her own way. She’s the bought and paid for beautiful that builds confidence at the cost of self-esteem; a human costume with veins of gold. I start to wonder what she really looks like, what her features would be if they’d been allowed to develop naturally. Is there enough of the original left that she can even use the same name? When does a woman stop becoming a woman? How much silicone, Botox, and plastic does it take before we need a new term to describe what once was?

“What?” she asks, and I realize that I was staring. Words swim around in the mud. None of them can express what’s needed.

“I miss you.” I say.

She laughs, a short bark of a laugh, but for an instant her glassy eyes crack. “What do you mean?” she asks, “I’m right here.”

“No,” I say and stand, “You’re not.”