“Mostly I feel it stir in crowds,” she thinks. “Or maybe that it can play itself out, undetected, in that setting.”
She wipes her eye with the back of her hand and the paint smears. She rolls onto her back, stretches her arms out against the hardwood and remains there, motionless, prostrating herself before the gods of release. In her mind, she is fastening bows to small packages of it and giving it away. Here: take some.
As she rids herself of the tiny boxes, she becomes lighter and begins to float. Not too much, just enough so that her hair still touches the floor. Persistent roots which hold stubbornly to the earth in some biological attempt to keep her grounded. She shakes her head and sees a pair of feet beside her.
“So like, you just hover like that,” a voice jabs, slicing imaginary strings and her head smashes into the floor. She grabs the back of her skull with both hands and rocks.
“I know it is,” she hears herself say. “But I just wanted to feel weightless, you know?”
“I believe this belongs to you”, she says, crouching down to her level, for a moment, and holding out a tiny box tied with ribbon. Her grave look speaks as she holds out the package. “You know you can’t just give that shit away.” The tiny box vibrates as she places it in her hand. And there’s more: “It’s yours girl, take it back.”
“Fuck”, she mumbles and shoves it wearily back in her pocket. She puts out her hand and helps her up off the floor, shaking her head. And resentfully heavier than before, she gets up off the floor.
And that’s where you’ve found me. Here on the floor in her apartment, trying to rid myself of it. To get someone else to carry it, just for a moment, so I can breathe, be dumb, careless, for a moment.
It’s my fault that it got to this point anyhow. I know that. I should by now. Neglected, after a time, it becomes insufferable. I delude myself into thinking I can just forget. Like you could forget to breathe. You couldn’t. But if you stopped, for a moment, your breath would come back, choking, desperate, violent, vengeful, fighting for it’s existence. So a period of neglect has left me. If I don’t sculpt, form it, create with it, mould it into words, colours, it will devour me.
I am sitting a the kitchen table now. Looking across at the blond hair that touches the nape of her neck, and quietly mouth: “I’m sorry”. I really didn’t try and give it to you. God. Mon seigneur.
And I immediately want to punch myself. I shift my weight and sit on my hands. For you, I will sculpt it so poetically into precious origami and sew infinite words of gratitude and disbelief that you even exist. The one in who’s presence I can finally fall asleep, who can melt the endless vibrations. I look back across the room at the neck where I want to live and close my eyes.
That never really happened, that bit with the levitation and the packages. I’ve always just been sitting at this kitchen table, watching her do the dishes.
She can’t stand a mess. It’s a good thing I have a pen.
