Koushin Unber
A lady in a matinee once told me we should switch places
Apparently she had had enough of overused TV tropes.
“Life will never be the same again, dear.”
I thought none of it, stepped into the idiot-box and disappeared behind the static screen;
and when I came back I was reborn.
Every breakdown a montage,
every inconvenience a plot device,
every colour had scheme,
every comrade an NPC,
every conversation a dialogue,
I mean I’ve heard of protagonist syndrome but this just got way out of hand.
But at least the weight of everyday shortcomings decreased like we packed and settled on the moon.
A highly saturated moon with a Wallows song on loop.
And when I screamed I screamed in the warm tones of sepia
I spoke in quotes
I wrote in Courier New
I saw in wide angle
I cried in glitter.
But when I tried to contact the matinee lady again, her dial tone let me know that she didn’t make it past a day.
Colour withdrawals, they called it – she shrivelled up and withered away in black and white.
I still see her sunken face in the static of my ashtray sometimes.
Koushin is a certified bruh girl with the emotional capacity of a brick. Rattle on about schools of philosophy or film theory to her at [email protected]