Like a thousand unmarked needles, invisible, but incessant,
in their chatter, the rain falls, and outside the sky is an unlit white, space but not quite. The
room is eerie in the light's dead glow, soaking in the darkness, which taints the windows as it seeps in,
but the laptop screen is bright. As is the TV as it shews a bizarre colourful diorama, a rape-justifying number from the 90s that holds my attention,
me, arrested,
for the sheer randomness of events and characters on the screen,
bathed in this dead light tinged with darkness,
transports the room somewhere beyond the normal even as a suited, sunglassed actor chases an impossibly clad actress and the lyrics, mixed with the chatter, try to stimulate some shamefully repressed corner of my brain.
The room, and me in it.
But then the chatter, just the chatter, takes me. I hear other sounds, as I do every night, and I wonder vaguely what they are, but mostly I
let myself be carried by the chatter,
swayed, driven, drenched.
I get up, leave my bed;
right outside my room, the roof is leaking, there is a pile of water on the floor,
not yet blood.
The darkness has completely taken the other rooms, but
nothing is making those other sounds that I hear.
I am in the verandah, staring at the rain, at the street outside, barely protected by the senile streetlamps,
The chill nips at my flesh, the wind brushes against my bones. The chatter grows ever louder.
I am alone.
But then,
as the vision of buildings, ringed by trees, imposing themselves on the wet, coiling, fullerene-coloured streets, and all of it, the entire scene,
struggling to eclipse the dead white space beyond,
threatens to overwhelm my attention, I turn around.
It is there in the darkness, a figure that is not me yet me.
Against all of my better judgement (if there is such a thing), I move towards it;
It turns, heels up in the air, toes pressing against the cold, ahistoric floor,
It walks, and unwilling, unwitting, I follow.
It moves down the stairs, as do I,
The soles of my slippers burning up in the cold.
The darkness inside grows.
Soon I am on the street,
The buildings on both sides like giant stairs,
The road a wet vomitorium.
The rain, needles and necessary backdrop.
The darkness outside, slightly more knowledgeable though less conversant.
And on both ends, and on either side, in the endless wet, the abundant dark, the unfading cold,
There is me. Many mes.
I run.
Afraid that I might slip, fall face first into the muddy pitch, devoid, at this point, of annotations,
towards and away
The rain never stops.
in their chatter, the rain falls, and outside the sky is an unlit white, space but not quite. The
room is eerie in the light's dead glow, soaking in the darkness, which taints the windows as it seeps in,
but the laptop screen is bright. As is the TV as it shews a bizarre colourful diorama, a rape-justifying number from the 90s that holds my attention,
me, arrested,
for the sheer randomness of events and characters on the screen,
bathed in this dead light tinged with darkness,
transports the room somewhere beyond the normal even as a suited, sunglassed actor chases an impossibly clad actress and the lyrics, mixed with the chatter, try to stimulate some shamefully repressed corner of my brain.
The room, and me in it.
But then the chatter, just the chatter, takes me. I hear other sounds, as I do every night, and I wonder vaguely what they are, but mostly I
let myself be carried by the chatter,
swayed, driven, drenched.
I get up, leave my bed;
right outside my room, the roof is leaking, there is a pile of water on the floor,
not yet blood.
The darkness has completely taken the other rooms, but
nothing is making those other sounds that I hear.
I am in the verandah, staring at the rain, at the street outside, barely protected by the senile streetlamps,
The chill nips at my flesh, the wind brushes against my bones. The chatter grows ever louder.
I am alone.
But then,
as the vision of buildings, ringed by trees, imposing themselves on the wet, coiling, fullerene-coloured streets, and all of it, the entire scene,
struggling to eclipse the dead white space beyond,
threatens to overwhelm my attention, I turn around.
It is there in the darkness, a figure that is not me yet me.
Against all of my better judgement (if there is such a thing), I move towards it;
It turns, heels up in the air, toes pressing against the cold, ahistoric floor,
It walks, and unwilling, unwitting, I follow.
It moves down the stairs, as do I,
The soles of my slippers burning up in the cold.
The darkness inside grows.
Soon I am on the street,
The buildings on both sides like giant stairs,
The road a wet vomitorium.
The rain, needles and necessary backdrop.
The darkness outside, slightly more knowledgeable though less conversant.
And on both ends, and on either side, in the endless wet, the abundant dark, the unfading cold,
There is me. Many mes.
I run.
Afraid that I might slip, fall face first into the muddy pitch, devoid, at this point, of annotations,
towards and away
The rain never stops.
