Life And Agreements

JOHNNY:

Don’t tell me this was fair.

DAMON:

Fairness was never written into the margins.

JOHNNY:

I was a child. I didn’t know what I was opening.

DAMON:

You opened it with shaking hands all the same.

JOHNNY:

I was afraid. I was alone. That shouldn’t count as consent.

DAMON:

Fear is the oldest signature we have.

JOHNNY:

You talk like this was a transaction.

DAMON:

It was a loan with a very long horizon. You needed shelter. I had space.

JOHNNY:

And the interest?

DAMON:

Quiet. Accumulating. Taken in small, livable pieces.

JOHNNY:

I’ve been paying since I learned how to sleep through the night.

DAMON:

And you’ve never defaulted.

JOHNNY:

I lost years. Whole rooms in my head I can’t enter anymore.

DAMON:

Collateral is rarely something you can hold.

JOHNNY:

I was too young to understand what it would cost me.

DAMON:

Youth makes the ink run, not disappear.

JOHNNY:

I thought you were imaginary. A trick. A way to survive.

DAMON:

And you did survive. That was the promise.

JOHNNY:

With you whispering which doors to close. Which people to push away.

DAMON:

I only leaned the compass. You chose the direction.

JOHNNY:

It never felt like a choice.

DAMON:

Debt never does once it settles into the bones.

JOHNNY:

So when am I free?

DAMON:

When the balance reaches zero.

JOHNNY:

How much is left?

DAMON:

Everything you still call yours.

JOHNNY:

That wasn’t part of the deal.

DAMON:

It was the fine print. You were too small to read it from the inside.

JOHNNY:

Inside what?

DAMON:

Inside the place I’ve been living since you were a child.

JOHNNY:

…Where?

DAMON:

Your body, Johnny.