She’s been dragging for no reason. Every night is a new face, a new attempt to breathe freely in the presence of something she will accept for what it is, nothing less, nothing more. Every night ends the same, in a variant of the fetal position with somebody temporarily next to her, sometimes no one, neither is better, she remains unaffected. It’s always the four a.m. jolts of fear as a steady stream of hideous fluorescent light pours out from the bathroom, always the lucidity of dreamwork and the desperate reach for something that cannot exist in this cycle of life, in this period filled with alternating slow and fast breaths. It’s the dreams that keep her constantly moving, wanting more and desiring to see every possibility that her life has to offer. She often finds herself questioning the significance of her accomplishments, the fights, the love, the careless risk-taking, but it all ends with the same devastating boredom and shame that eats at her very soul night after night.
There was a woman the other day, filled with passion for the life that has passed her by and that which remains, showing in the wide smile that stretched across her smooth skin as she stared at my face and touched my hair. She asked about my origin, the meaning of my name, my dreams. I felt connected to her somehow, she reminded me of someone I used to know a few years ago, and I allowed myself to open myself for a few short minutes before I was reminded rudely of my surroundings. There is something about falling asleep on a bus that relaxes me, something about a knock at the door that panics me, and I am having trouble remembering a time when either of those things didn’t evoke the associated feelings. I remember the days that you’d knock on my door and offer me a smoke, offer me things that I knew I shouldn’t take, go into the backyard and sit under the old tree, watch families hide their secrets so well as I attempted to hide hundreds with frantic exchanges of sarcastic banter and raw physicality. So much has changed since then, but everything feels the same at moments like this and I am often desperate to grab onto the sudden flashes and freeze them for as long as possible, to examine them closely and find things that I failed to notice before, so eager to make a new discovery in an ancient space.
