Through my living room window I am watching the torn plastic sheeting flail in the wind. It's taped to the screen door of the house across the street. I don't know who lives there, or if anyone does. I never look. I never pay attention. The wind is strong and the trees sway. It's not raining anymore but everything is soaking and it looks moderately warm outside.
I didn't shower. I'm half dressed. I'm not hungry and I'm going to be late for work. Staring at the plastic sheeting taped to a screen door.
Keep wondering if I should be thinking about impermanence or fragility or whatever else TV has told me we focus on when this happens. But none of that is up there. I can't seem to really focus on anything. The plastic sheeting is barely registering. I wonder if this is how trees feel. Technically alive, mostly unaware, existing outside of time.
I realize I'm dissociating and pull myself back.
More weight. More ache. More. It all floods back in and I remember why I was staring out the window in the first place. Why I was trying to dissociate.
Woke up choking with my eyes stinging and it took a few minutes to get it under control. Poured coffee. Sat on the floor against the wall, the cool of it on my skin. The coarse carpet under my feet. The sting in my eyes and the ocean in my chest. Sat on the floor against the wall and stared at a small painting I had been given.
He's playing guitar with the wire frame of a lampshade. It's ridiculous and hilarious and it sounds fantastic.
He's wearing a priest's collar and lip-syncing in a demolished living room into a dying camcorder.
He's hugging me and we haven't seen each other since I left four years ago and he's hugging me in a crowded bar.
Small and overwhelming flashes, over and over if I'm not careful. In television static and fog I drink some of the coffee. I don't know where I set the mug down. I somehow have pants on now. I'm somehow standing now in front of the window.
Plastic sheeting slapping against the metal frame of a screen door. Late for work.
The air is tighter and the world is emptier and I'm late for work.
No comments:
Post a Comment