Are You Smarter

I feel so adolescent writing this. I feel like I'm that girlthing I was in improv class---because yes, I did improv as a kid, and no, I wasn't actually funny, if you were wondering---fantasizing about fifteen year old Ava, who was hilarious like a mythological muse, who would give me Capri Suns at snacktime and play Duran Duran for me on her iPod. I feel like I'm that beast of an eleven year old concept, writhing in agony on the living room couch because I just wasn't old enough for Cameron Cameron and only Cameron.  It's so embarrassing, you know, to be so old and so full of want, and I'm not even old and I'm barely full of want. 

The eclipsing just isn't going to happen, dear. No one is going to extract the words out. Ha! Got you! We've been secretly filming you this whole time, this is all a theatre-mask sick prank and no, she's not really broken, they really do love you back, or at least we think so---Smile for the camera, wait for the flash to kick in. I'm reading between the lines, says the director, and I think you'd be perfect for this other show I'm doing where we torture the truth out on screen for all to see, and I won't be disclosing the methods we use, whether or not I'm joking, or whether or not they love you back, really, in the real sense, on this present Earthly plane. You'll just have to guess. No, you're not smarter than 

a millionaire and you're not smarter than a fifth grader and you're

not smarter than that little girl either. You're not strong enough, not old enough, too old. You'll just have to figure it out on your own, but sometimes you really do know, you know, sometimes there is a truth we all acknowledge but simply cannot accept enough to claw at the existence of. There's just not the same kind of hope. There's just no getting out of here. It's a pressure trigger, if I get up the whole thing blows, and then I really will have nothing, by design. Look the other way. Plug your ears.