(Today)

And then just like that, the world seems to reverse, the nights spin back toward night, the days exchange, the sun rises again in the east, and sets in the west, and only stays at the peak of the sky for barely more than a moment in time. My breathing seems to last for a breath, sixty seconds a minute.

I wake up at eight thirty, barely four hours after finally falling asleep. My mind, spinning, my eyeballs flickering back and forth, sleep disrupted, sick to my stomach.

My grasp on the physical, while painful, is slipping.

They said this would happen.

(June 12, 2010)

The rain drifts against the window, but slowly. I can’t tell if the drops are moving with irregular speed or if the storm is only unleashing such a gentle, misty drizzle. Most times the clouds just hover overhead, threatening, sometimes spitting, like a dog bearing his teeth.

I awoke earlier in the day with a feeling that ate away at my gut. A sensation of comfort and security, likely just an overcorrection after my fear the day before, the nightmare image pressed against the glass from the other side, some darkened reflection of myself, peering out, peering in, a horror, a dream, an unreality I’ve realized is gradually structuring everything I know.

As I came to realize that the daylight hours marking the time I was awake might not be so different from the night time hours I was asleep,

reversed, awake at night, asleep at day,

dreaming at day, asleep at night.

the night pushes deep, black, thick

the day pushes gray, shallow, thick

and me.

Somewhere in between, a medium, a perspective, seeking an understanding, an interpreter.

But the internet has gone, shot. My phone still works but the process of turning my face downward against the keys, tiny fingers tapping touch-screen spots, the world shrinking to a pixel, a resolution too fine, push the earth into a computer screen and try to make meaning, but you can’t see the man standing in the background, leaning his head around the building and watching, the image is too compressed, all we can see is what hesitates right before our eyes, big, distracting, and pressing his face against the glass in a mask he bought at a cheap costume store.

The tickets aren’t sold out, it’s a rain delay. The storm and sickness has forced the band from the stage and the audience has to imagine the songs they might sing from the comfort of homes the same.

And still outside, the drizzle comes down slowly and stains the glass.

(Today)

The air drifts gentle against my face, a touch of a breeze, cool, the heat of the sun snug. Feeling better. Feeling the grass below me, digging my hands into the dirt.

My cell phone goes off on the ground next to me and I answer immediately on the first ring. The voice on the other end, while an electronic tone lingers below, sounds like Kyle though I know it’s not.

“The droplets on the grass, below the window, sink into the earth, wrapping the dirt around them like a darkness, else they too dry in the sun.”

I hang up the line when the voice begins to repeat, make a note on the laptop next to me, then go back to editing the post of the week before.

(June 12, 2010, later)

A tiny drop of water, beaded up and curled against all the others. Ignore the bleeding others and pay attention. This one, reflects the outside in a warp, the image upside-down, the day running backward.

If I look closely, I fancy inside the drop I can see an image of myself, peering deep. The gray sky below, the wet ground above, the trees leaning over and shedding the water. A touch of water splashes above,

Below,

Water slips, a flat stream, too much weight, the drop grows thick, too heavy, out of control, it loses grip on the window and slides down the glass, impacting other drops, adding to their weight, becoming as one, leaving behind only a trail that is traced by the other water drops, slipping away in a confusion left by the first, ongoing, continuing, until the storm clouds clear, only an empty still spattering scattering across the glass, covering, the rest of the surface dries clear, and eventually the water droplets that are left fade.