let lemons be angry

I'm supposed to be doing research on orphans and abuse. This is to be the one big thing I leave school with, the year-long project, my great work.

But I can't bring myself to look for orphans to feed my opus. The more I think about them, the more I disgust myself with how we have come to need the needy. We need them to feel charitable, to feel compassionate, to feel bigger than we are on small-minded days. We need them to satisfy our yearly requirement of good works. Take them away and we too disappear into the crowd. Equality is no fun for the hero.

I have six days to compile a journal of research. Three months' worth of work to be done in a week, and I can't even get past the first thought on this.

-

We watched the milky sky turn white with ax-wielding clouds, lying on the narrow picnic mat on everybody's favorite hill. Then another wind came and the sky was dark again, and the girls were singing yet another random obscure song, and all I could think of was how blank my mind was. How blank, as if insulated and taped up so nothing can get in.