Month: April 2020

Bright white bland bathroom. The emptiness of it keeps expanding. The pedestal sink. The tub. Blank walls. Gray cheap laminate floor. It’s so clean it’s without life. A large man opens the door to my left while I sit on the toilet. He’s all that matters now. His anger is vibrant, overwhelming. Something is finally happening. The bathroom is alive now, but in the wrong way. He is the father of my daughter’s boyfriend. The wife follows the husband into the room. She’s picking at the dry flakey skin of her bottom lip. Faded red lipstick blurs the edges of her mouth. They walk through the bathroom, scanning the floor, the corners. It’s as if they don’t see me here on the toilet. I say, “You can’t do this.” I pull up my pants. Flush. I go out, calling my daughter’s name. She can explain this. My husband, walking toward me in the hallway, holds up his arm, showing me his wrist. “They took my watch.” It’s been replaced with something large and bulky. We want his watch back. I go looking for the angry man. If I have to violently take the watch back, I will. He’s coming toward me. The hallway seems so narrow now. The wife, behind him, small and uncertain. They are still looking for something on the ground. I want them to look up. To see me. But they scan the white carpet. I call out, “Make his mouth disappear!” It disappears. He doesn’t like that. His mouth comes back. I call out, “Make his eyes disappear!” Nothing happens. “His hair!” Gone. “Mouth!” Gone, but his hair returns. Hair. Ears. Nose. Mouth. Things go away only to return. Except his eyes, I can never get rid of his eyes. I’m cycling through his features, going as fast as I can. Mouth. Hair. Ears. Nose. Everything gets tangled and suffocates. He and his wife, concerned about his face, stop searching for what they came here for.

He eats at the table alone. A bowl of cereal. Bent over, head dipped down, neck curved, the bones of his spine like knuckles in a fist. I don’t know how he gets out. But here he is like this always in the early morning light. The gray slant of it. There’s no yellow shine of breaking day. Just gray, white, silver-blue light that hits the surface of the counter, the table, the floor, breaking open only itself, making it hard to see.

Every night I put this boy to bed behind the wall. We can’t have him walking around alone at night while we sleep. I tell him that we do this because of my insomnia. He says nothing. Just eats his cereal. The white milk dripping off the spoon, back into the bowl.

Walking through a strange cramped apartment hallway. Clean white walls. Everything seems strange. Everything is shifting. I look around and it all alters as I move. Getting smaller, then larger, then closer, then farther. The floors are made of fir and such a pretty brown. An apartment door to my left is slightly open. I peek inside as I pass. Dark brown leather work boots with long thin curved laces. My body is moving without me. I have no intention.

I am in a bedroom. It is very dark. The blue curtains are pulled down over the window. It is daytime. Some of the light from outside filters in as the breeze flutters the curtains.

I am sitting on the bed. I remember that I want to taste something while I am here. I ask for an apple. I snap the fingers of my left hand and hold my palm open. A sort of apple appears. It is only partially there. It has a round top on the right side but that is all. It isn’t red like I wanted. What I can see of it is gray. I close my eyes. “When I open my eyes, there will be a red apple in my hand.” I open my eyes. What was gray is now red but most of the apple is still missing. I ask for an orange. In my hand appears four small pieces of a tiny orange. I taste them. There’s no sweetness. No juice. I ask for a cucumber and get tiny gherkins not yet pickled. I remember that I want to rub my hands together and just as I am about to touch, I am pulled out of that place and wake up here.