The sludge is heavy in here. Everything’s still, so still, exactly how I left it the previous day. Do I wish something to change out of the blue? My little predictable domain? Always expecting surprises and keeping getting disappointed. But I have to write it down. It has been too long and something wants to get out. I want something else to change so it’s easier to deal. Getting distracted. My eyes roam but they miss everything. From my vantage point I can’t make out a damned thing that I can use. I hear nothing but dead static noises made by something that’s suffocating me that’s also making me comfortably warm. I feel like a ghost inside a box that’s already buried. A confine? A coffin?

I slide open the door a crack. Just a crack, because it’s supposed to be frigid cold outside. But what’s this? What IS this? I nudge my nose inside the crack like a dog lapping at the rushing cool fresh air and I get the sensations: like the first dab of a painter’s brush, like the weak yet triumphant cries of a baby bird; like the glassy eyes of a lazing cat in the afternoon sun. It smells, upon closer reliance on my eyes, of wet, supple, black, juicy earth, of the blushing-green brave new grasses upon it, of the tree that’s full of majestic life opening, connecting to the whole of the sky, and to me. I implore, beg my nostrils to open wider, get a life, fly high while still hiding my under-appreciating bulk inside safety and warmth. Just poking my nose out between the crack like a fucking junkie inhaling the life back into the body.

Then I closed the door and started working on getting rid of something I can’t possibly live without.