Sometimes, I sit near the window and feel that I am part of the conversation people are having outside. This usually happens on cloudy days, when I can actually see them. I sit at the distance I would have anyway, if there were no windows between us.

Most of the time, I do not mind being alone because I can do this. The people outside are my friends. Their names are Brad and Tom, and I have known them forever. They know I am mute, and I have been since the second grade for unknown, mysterious reasons. They don't need to include me in the conversation because they know I actually can't hear either. This is a more recent development, so they haven't had the chance to learn how to communicate with me yet. Not many people have, actually there's only been one.

Since I cannot hear, my accent changes daily, actually my entire personality changes daily because I suppose I do not have one of those either. Some mornings, I am a Russian spy and other mornings a cowboy. I like to perform deaths, particularly the suicide of Natasha, a Russian  woman I created one time in a diner.

Oh, Beel! I say. I die!

Things weren't always this way. I tried to change my lifestyle and went on a soul-searching journey, only to find that my whole life up to that point had been performance art. I have Greyhound in my phone in between Gina and Hally, and neither of them know I have never been a real person. Bill is not a real person either, and he does not actually love me.

Natasha believes in love, but she always dies. The season in Bellingham has changed; I feel it in the wind, in the clouds, in myself. The thought of committing to school again or to anything makes me want to ride off on my horse to Montana, to somewhere unsettled.

Growing up, the fall season came with cold and here with rain. When I could walk without pain last August, I walked to the ocean and watched the strange summer rain create circles on the water and felt a change was coming. Now the sky is cloudy, and I am not myself.


Oh, fall.