Blinking
The air is stale and damp with anticipation and the perspiration of early Summer heat. This morning’s shower hangs softly like morning dew on the windows of the small studio that someone else might call my home. I know the windows beg to be reopened, but the voices of screaming children already seep in through the locked shutters--- the noise like an off-key tune. A more well-rested and well-adjusted individual may have invited those voices in like birdsong in December, but today, I am not that person. Today, I am the person who just learned that the walls of her new flat are too thin. None of it compares, however, to the irritating hum of the fridge. It grates on my nerves and competes with the stuffy air trying to strangle me. I wonder at the bug spray I’d wiped along the windowsill this morning. Is it still wet? Has the smell started to numb my mind, or am I still just exhausted from too many nights spent begging the clock to slow down and the distance between continents to shrink? It doesn’t matter, though. None of it does. I chastise myself for letting the hum of the fridge and the thickness of stagnant air take from me my sanity. It was supposed to be meaningful. I reached inside and fished around, like pulling seeds and guts out of a pumpkin. I fear now that the story I’m waiting to carve into my jack-o-lantern is starting to look like a farce.
I think of my conversation last night. Could I somehow describe the way the sheets stuck to my skin, the way my eyelashes felt clad in iron, but my heart felt light as a flutter as I lay awake, dreaming of possibility? No, I probably couldn’t. It’s too unspecific. The sting of blue screens burns into my retinas… from last night, from right now… from the next hour I’m sure to spend negotiating with it for peace. My eye sockets feel hollow. I should take a break; I know this is nonsense. This isn’t soaked in anticipation or dripping with intrigue. And I’m still thinking about a humid October spent speaking to a disembodied voice on the other end. There was anticipation and intrigue there, waiting for an answer that may have doomed me. I’m still waiting to find out. The cursor blinks back at me, waiting for me to answer a question it never asked.
I’ve always hated computers. The words swim off the page, the blue light lives like rats under the house, chewing wires inside my mind. I could’ve sworn I was brilliant once, but never in the face of this soul-sucking machine.
If I counted the minutes, certainly I’d find that an eternity had passed, waiting for inspiration to strike like some Biblical proclamation, but alas… It’s just my cursor and I, blinking back at each other. I wish I could trade its hollow stare for the ancient and wise gaze of the great galaxy and a 4:00 am sky. Alas, the sky here doesn’t bed itself until nearly midnight, and by 4:00 am, it’s already wiping sleep from its eyes. I don’t know why I recall it now, like an old lover. I never liked the night. It was always too lonely, too empty, and the world felt a million miles away. Perhaps it felt too pregnant with possibilities. Perhaps that is why I, too, cannot bring myself to type anything meaningful. I have too many moments that blur and fade and turn inside out like the inside of a kaleidoscope. Perhaps that’s why these are the only words that have found their way onto the page today.