a secondhand moving mountains

Right now, the world is being serenaded to sleep by a symphony of ticking clocks and all I hear is silence. It’s a mechanical, logistical silence; the kind that permeates even the stillest of evenings. It’s a synthetic synesthesia. I can hear the cold reverberating off the walls in a minor key. The aroma of the icy dripping faucet is pungent and melancholy – a sweet floral cadence. It’s a bouquet of wilting chrysanthemums punctuated by brown baby’s breath. The space heater sends acrylic waves of metallic heat over my frigid body as I begin to thaw. I get up to pour a glass of tepid water – I am a corpse reanimated. My pallid toes crack and collide on the linoleum like ice cubes under a stream of warm water. My limbs feels stiff and brittle. In that moment, I become a tree in winter hibernation. My eyelids keep drooping heavy and sticky like molasses and I force them to stay open until it’s too blurry to see. I crawl in my bed, under the covers, and habitually move to one side. I subconsciously bunch my blanket behind my back like a body, like arms, like pulsing warmth. As I close my eyes I let Chopin penetrate me. I move closer to my space heater and imagine moisture, moths, and mosquitoes. I imagine dirty feet and soft skin and smelling of earth. Suddenly, my limbs are not my own. I become strong and tall and I envelop myself – only to wake, startled, that I’m thousands of miles away. I look outside and there’s snow on the ground. After being kissed by the desert air, my lips are cracked and bleeding.

I’m cold. I’m sure the warmth was just a dream. That sea of insects, of trees, of drugs – the thousands of unread pages. That ocean of opportunity: vast, tidal, unwavering. My mind is warped like those books left in the humidity to fend for themselves. I reach back to that mental place, not of clarity but of peace, and it’s gone.

But I'm home. I’m writing again. I’m reading again. I’m painting, drawing, thinking, creating again. I am myself again.

Suddenly my thoughts become waterfalls and I’m right back where I started.

I am beginning to embrace Kafka’s brand of enlightenment.