Rest Stop

by Nat Cassidy

Trauma’s trauma, but I think some people are still just born assholes.”

Safe inside the store—so bright, so blissfully cool after even just a few moments of the muggy summer air—and he feels better. Sometimes capitalism knows how to hold you just right.

We’re all in this mess together. Things like religion, like nationalities, are just trivia. We’re all just bugs against the windshield of time, right?

When evil comes, Abraham, it does not wear a mask. It looks as plain as day.

But what’s the point of surviving if he sacrifices his damned humanity to do it?

what do we do in the face of evil? We do not say, ‘Oh maybe you have a point, I’ll keep it down, I’ll put my faith and traditions away.’ We spit in evil’s eye and say, back to Hell with you, I come from a long line of survivors!

‘I love this glass. It is so beautiful. It carries the water to my lips and keeps me alive. It catches the light. But if, one day, I accidentally drop it and it shatters, my heart breaks with it. I am so sad. So I must remember: being broken is the glass’s truest nature. It will be broken far longer than it is whole. It is meant to be broken. It is already broken. How can I be sad then, for this brief illusion of wholeness?’

“You want things so badly, but I think one of the things you want is to never have to fight for the other things you want, and that makes it impossible to, y’know, have those other things!

We’re all just biding our time before we break, aren’t we? This is just the rest stop.

Is this the feeling of being broken? He wonders. Or is it the process of breaking? Is this how it feels to refuse to break? Or is every moment simply its own act of creation? Its own god, too holy for a name?