My arm drapes itself over the half-cylinder of the sofa, as I lay my neck in the cradle of its head, and in my mind, step onto a ledge. But the feelings skid out from within me. Or maybe they do not; maybe they are just inert.
For once, I do not morph into her. I am not soaked in salty tears, neither does my chest swell with each tuft of air breathed into colourful balloons dancing within it.
My mind is reluctant to feel, and my body the same as it has always been - a theory; a conceptual piece of my being.
I build boats out of the clay that I disfigure, and they carry me in the crevices of their eye-shaped bodies. Sometimes I am with my grandparents -or watching them, instead of the other way round- and sometimes I am just at the departmental store; walking past the register without a pair of cold, slimy hands and a heart racing behind the skin of my neck.
At night, before I sleep, my eyes rest on a bottle of water. I know this bottle. I am the one who bought it; from the departmental store. It says Go! Aqua on its neck. The sheer pretentiousness of these words is what bothers me every night.
I don't know why I keep it there; inches from my bed. That is, the safe space, the place where I cannot think. And I do not know because I do not drink a whole lot of water during the day, and even more so during the night. So I turn it away from my hallowed heaven, towards the mirror, and drown myself in thick blankets that are always too hot.
I met a friend the other day. I have known them for some time now. We were friends, I think; at some point; though we let ourselves keep a somewhat awkward distance. That distance was getting gradually shorter now, and I felt the dampness of my palms and feet all of a sudden. A hammering noise within my neck.
Music seeps into my ears through plugs as I watch them watching me. Both trying to know if the other would stop.
I fidget desperately with the rocks in my hands. The kind out of which little saplings grow, at the corners of places where they are needed, tucked beside gravestones.
Bye bye Miss American Pie
We tip-toe into our rehearsed conversations like jesters with faces of a paint that never chips.
But then I turn, as is my habit, and realize without much of a surprise that I was lying on one of my boats.
I am still here.
The water laps over itself; perhaps hugging its knees. And I sit on a boat, watching my grandparents fall asleep;
Singing
This will be the day that I die
This will be the day that I die