You are somehow in the bathroom. You stand there bewildered by a moment. Watching the toilet flush, the water cascade and collapse upon itself, transfixed. It empties then fills with a surprising roar. You are here, but not. You can’t remember how you got there, or what just happened. You wash and dry your hands. You are now automatic.
Empty has filled you. Again.
You stand in the kitchen. Look around, then down, seeing yourself as a stranger in familiar circumstances. All is internal. You wait. Why are you here and here you are lock horns and battle for sense. You wait, you stand. Shoulders hunched, head lowered, thoughts lower still.
What is simple is now complex.
All actions are tiring. Those who care ask questions, but the weight of the answers are too heavy to lift. You cannot show these things. What you carry now is as large as it is invisible. You try to respond, but you cannot. You are silenced, winded again. Breathing is all you can hope for, manage.
Everything rubs the eye, pierces the ear.
The air has become solid. You move slowly through time. Your face is slackened, hands clumsy, grace inert. You want everyone to go, for everything to fade to gone. You repel care while you couldn’t care less. It doesn’t matter if you hurt someone tonight because pain is as distant as pleasure. Emotion is a construct now, a falsehood.
You are anti-everything, pro-nothing.
You assault the self. What triggered this latest bout is forgotten. Memories cannot be stirred, steps cannot be retraced, paths are without signs. You’d never come here again if you knew how you got here in the first place. You’re too tired to hate now. Even yourself. That would require feeling.
You are a shell, a vacuum wrapped in clothes.
Tonight you hear the jackals forage outside. They yelp and bark in the distance under a deadened sky. They gossip about your sensitivity to moments, and laugh at how the slightest, everyday event can bring you to the ground so easily. You sit outside yourself and concur. There’s no embarrassment here tonight. All theories are correct when everything seems wrong. You’d laugh at yourself if laughter were possible.
You sit. You wait. Night drags the dread of daylight towards you.
You are null, lost in a void.
