Anxious fractured whispers on your tongue in the night mixed in with the silence and occasional sigh—components of the dark that you’d rather forget absorbed in the snoring of TV set. Through unremembered rooms, out into the street. The sunlight bakes the sidewalk until it’s blank as a beach. You pour into the muscles of the passenger seat. We drive toward the horizon which is wrinkled with sleep. Awake in the hotel room, you aimlessly stir. You’ve always been at war with someone who you were. The kids all press their faces to the window and slur, all their features melting into monstrous blurs. You said, out of nowhere, “Oh, I’ve never had fun.” It echoed off the buildings between long stains of neon, landing on the shoulders of the boys on their bikes and the girls in their cars screaming punk songs at each red light, barlight preserved inside their eyes. We’re alive, but only by a kind of compromise.
Your body cracks and whispers as you sink into sleep. Your body is preparing for the day that you’ll leave. Life is improvised, a shout in the street¹, and meanings are applied in between heartbeats. Sunlight wades into the lake and softens. I’m trying to not end up in the hospital again. No, I’d never survive the miracle of being alive. If I just keep myself alive and walk back outside. If get totally redesigned, one day I’ll rest. One day I’ll do my best. God bless this mess. Embrace nothingness.
¹ "Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:
— That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!
— What? Mr Deasy asked.
— A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders." Ulysses, James Joyce
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