Generally I see nothin. A car goes by, a strange pedestrian, but nothin of notice. Generally I spend my time fighting the urge to look at my phone to day dream. On the black and white screens with that cheap security camera footage is the sidewalk outside the bank. Then there’s the main entrance two large heavy doors and the back. I often fight the images of strange things happening. If you stare at anything long enough you start to see things. As a child I would stare at my ceiling and create wild pictures. I bet that’s how early civilizations made people and animals out of the stars.

I’m day dreaming again. Back to the cameras. There’s only four inside cameras. The one in front of the vault, by the bank tellers area, and each door on the inside. I’ve been working here for two years now. I used to be really paranoid frantically watching the leaves float by every pedestrian a criminal. Now it’s so different. Two years of static and I fight to keep my eyes on the screen. I’m barely looking at though. I mean really looking, my eyes are there but my mind isn’t.

I think about how my family is home asleep. How my wife just kissed me before she went to sleep and I just woke up. That’s all I’ll see of her today and tomorrow till the weekend. I worry I’m wasting my time away from my daughter.

The screen again dammit. No matter what I do I cannot seem to keep my mind on the screen. A shadow walks by. It’s a woman, my wife. She’s looking at the camera she knows I can see her. I walk over and get the door ask her what she’s doing here. She said she missed me and that she brought me some food she made.

Back to the static. Just another day dream.

I had a dream once. That the man I loved was married, and I knew it and ignored it the whole time. Then I saw his beautiful kind wife and his blond little girl holding a blanket and then I felt it in my stomach. He was married. Then I felt sick and guilty and wanted him to leave me alone, look at the family you have! How can you pursue me?!

When I woke up I panicked, still thinking he was married. Then I remembered he wasn’t married. He just had sold his soul to the military. That’s who had him, who was in some way taking care of him. Why he’d pursued me perhaps to get what was missing. And the gut feeling of pain I try to wake up without remembering is that he’s leaving. Off to his wife and kid to which he belongs to, not be the little side distraction.

Next to the military, I am the other woman. I am the one he sneaks off to see. Breaks rules for, lies over. But at the end of the day he’s not leaving his wife, he can’t. He’s too invested, he has responsibilities. I suppose I should’ve known this when I started to have feelings for him. I couldn’t understand how it would really be to date a marine. Now I know.

“It’s just another memory I thought you should know Clare. I’m getting old and I won’t live forever. I have many good stories, some true some embellished a bit. Only a bit. I just wanted to tell someone about the first guy I fell in love with.”

Under the many moons of our world I forced my mind to memorize each one. I knew I would never see them again. I looked at each plant and flower and hoped to never forget each one. I could take nothing to this new planet. I could barely take myself. If I contaminated anything I would be murdered publicly as a warning to everyone else. I thought of my parents and how I was leaving them behind. My whole world. And there was no goodbyes no celebrations, no long embraces. Just one last look out the window. And the past. Then up away to the future it is for me.

“In the morning... it will be better. I promise”

“ You can’t promise that. Lying to me won’t fix anything.”

“ It can’t get worse. I hope”

“Well don’t jinx it. Listen I love you but I refuse to hold these secrets any longer. It’s burden I can’t carry I just-“

“ No don’t say that. It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. Just wait till morning please.”

“ I can’t. I won’t. I’m sorry you just know too much I can’t handle it anymore”

“ How do you think I feel?! I live with this everyday!”

“...”

“ Forget then”

“ Hey? Do you know where I am? I seem to be lost my name is Killian, and yours?”

“It doesn’t matter, I’m lost too. Good luck Killian. Bye.”

In the City of Sails they have quite traditional values. There is no room to grow. Quite literally. The women cook and then men fish and that is how it goes.

In the City of Sails all the children have ever known is the swaying of the sea. The only bird they have ever heard is seagulls speak. And in the night, when they dream, they see fantastic things like deer and maybe trees.

The elderly in this city mope most. For they had trouble adapting without a coast. They reminisce and tell stories to the kids. This stew once had beef, and the air wasn’t also so salty. Remember? they’d say. The dirt, the mud? The green and the yellow and colors other than blue.

There aren’t many visitors or vacations, everyone stays in their own stations. The water is still and the people are grim, besides the children. For the ocean is all they’ve ever known the swaying and rocking of the boats. The City of Sails is it for them.

She broke her wrist, I was right there I saw it happen. She broke her wrist and instead of screaming or crying she just kept gasping as if air had lost all oxygen. She looked at me and then her wrist and then she started sobbing. This was the calm part of that day, when my eyes could still see and stay in one place at a time. As she was sobbing everyone rushed around her making a spectacle of it trying to ask her what happened as if she could speak. So stupid, can’t they tell she can barely breathe. So we rushed her to the hospital and I held her in the car, the road was bumpy and with every rock under the wheel she yelped, my father apologized, and I held her harder. She cried quietly now as my eyes darted over the road as if to prepare myself for her pain. Somehow I felt it all, not the pain but the panic. She focused on her pain and I focused on everything else for her. We got to the hospital and she cried hoping to get help, but she did not. Six hours outside in the cold. We watched the sunset go down, but it was not romantic or relaxing. In fact as it got darker the more adrenaline kicked in. She was barefoot and I offered my shoes several times. She was more than that though, she was alone. She begged her parents to come, they did not. She reached out to her friends for comfort, they laughed. And I sat there, feeling everything for her as she felt the pain, more than physical now. To be abandoned in a time of need, I was there but I am not who she wanted. That is okay-because I was there. In the dark I saw so much more than one ever sees in day. Outside the hospital as she swayed in and out of a sleep like state due to pain. It had been hours by now. No Advil. My eyes couldn’t sit still, they were restless watching all movements every man a threat, every woman a danger. Scary people reside outside of hospitals at night. Ask the nurses, they know. A woman was crying, she had a bag with her. And a lot of towels wrapped over her hand. I saw the bag. It was a finger. There was a young man screaming about snakes and other things, obviously on a trip that didn’t go as planned. A boy wheeled in dressed up as if for a play. He was dressed as a skeleton, face painted as he was rolled into the hospital on a gurney. How ironic to enter the hospital as a skeleton. Then there was the dead man. He deserves his own paragraph. She was asleep at this time. I saw him wheeled out of the hospital on a bed. White hair so thin I could see his scalp. Eyes unfocused set on some unknown point living people cannot see. His mouth slightly open without the care to close it now. It doesn’t matter anymore. No mask but an oxygen tank connected to the bed, except it wasn’t on him. They wheeled him out the front of the hospital, like a show. Look at this man, take bets is he dead or alive? Watch as we bring him outside in the cold. Will he shiver? My eyes followed him until they could no more and then I returned to Surveillance. She left me. She got the bed and my father got the chair beside it while I sat in my chair outside. 12pm. Then it was just me and my eyes. Me planning which rock to pick up if the strange man at the car that kept staring at me walked over. He didn’t. A nurse came out and told me to sit inside in the waiting room. There was a teenage boy with his older sister I assumed. He coughed a lot, no mask, this made me nervous. There was a woman with red eyes she coughed. A man of the late forties hung over himself in a wheelchair. He wasn’t coughing. Finally, I was allowed in the room. Vomiting down the hall, the curtain shielded us from a man talking to himself. I watched the time change occur that night. 13 hours of chaos till we got home.

I’ve been thinking about a life without you. The return to loneness. I think it would change me to continue this journey alone again. I remember it. How it was before, the earthquakes. I remember the never ending roll of the ground below me, the instability, the clinging to ghosts and fragile china. Then I met you and the ground only rumbled never roared. And you stood unafraid unyielding and showed me how. I felt the need to stand with you, stand for you as you did for me. So that even when the ground shook we stood unharmed, unaffected, unafraid. If you leave me will I still be able to stand? Will I crumble as I did before and lose my strength? What will I hold onto? The cupboards? The drapes? The phantoms I held before never took shape. I chased them and they disappeared, distractions from flying objects in the room. I didn’t chase you. I was on the ground when we met. I’m not sure if you knew how bad it was before you walked in. I hid it from you but you healed it anyway. Maybe I will still be okay. Perhaps life after you I will have learned how to walk steady, on my own. But perhaps, my world will cave in without the support beams of your arms. Perhaps a flood will start by my own cause and the door will be locked. Maybe I need to learn how to go on without you. It’s not safe not to doubt you. But I don’t even want to imagine life without you.