(no subject)
I have long been suspicious that I, like a character in an Edgar Allen Poe story, have only at all the worst times oppressively fine-tuned senses. Not the sixth sense kind--that requires a greater affinity for metaphors--but of the literal ones. Especially when I am alone and it gets so loud in my head and so quiet outside it that I know every little stir and blink and flash and crackle of a city turning itself in for the night. And what one has to do with such a fearful temperament is ignore it all.
But just a few times, and always when he was out of town and I was here by myself, and a few blades of grass sighed and a bit of moonlight sank away from the blinds just enough for me to notice, I have made myself lie pefectly still and not go to the window. When Claire was too afraid--of what, of what? I thought--to sleep by herself, she came to my room and whimpered and I let her curl up beside the bed while I checked the locks on the doors and never mind the stirring and the waning light and the shades softly treading.
It's a quiet place here; I hardly know my neighbors' faces, yet in my bed at night I hardly ever feel alone.
The clock sits on the windowsill and I set it after a shower and I saw in a sideways glance the dark coming toward me and the dark was shaped like a man crouched down and stepping sideways. The floor inside is just level with the ground out there and at the time I turned around and if shadows had eyes ours would have met. I looked at Malick turned on his side in bed and what if it was my shadow and do I see things that aren't there and had to know that this was what it seemed before I could commit to a scream and it didn't take long for me to know.
And then the police and they came to the wrong house and I couldn't yell at them from across the street because they don't like to be yelled at when they're looking in bushes for shadows in the middle of the night.
And for the rest of the night and today the stiffness and flutter of the edge and being on it and the welling up and throbbing against the seams fury at the overgrown frat boys that live behind and the man that visits next door every night and all of them in traffic today and that I passed on the sidewalk and the produce guy who asked me if I was finding everything ok in the grocery store and having to look at them differently today, matching silhouettes to a shadow that last night was 3 inches from my belly button.
The low-grade fence behind the house is caved in from a clumsy leap over it. I know where he went but don't know if that's where he came from.
But just a few times, and always when he was out of town and I was here by myself, and a few blades of grass sighed and a bit of moonlight sank away from the blinds just enough for me to notice, I have made myself lie pefectly still and not go to the window. When Claire was too afraid--of what, of what? I thought--to sleep by herself, she came to my room and whimpered and I let her curl up beside the bed while I checked the locks on the doors and never mind the stirring and the waning light and the shades softly treading.
It's a quiet place here; I hardly know my neighbors' faces, yet in my bed at night I hardly ever feel alone.
The clock sits on the windowsill and I set it after a shower and I saw in a sideways glance the dark coming toward me and the dark was shaped like a man crouched down and stepping sideways. The floor inside is just level with the ground out there and at the time I turned around and if shadows had eyes ours would have met. I looked at Malick turned on his side in bed and what if it was my shadow and do I see things that aren't there and had to know that this was what it seemed before I could commit to a scream and it didn't take long for me to know.
And then the police and they came to the wrong house and I couldn't yell at them from across the street because they don't like to be yelled at when they're looking in bushes for shadows in the middle of the night.
And for the rest of the night and today the stiffness and flutter of the edge and being on it and the welling up and throbbing against the seams fury at the overgrown frat boys that live behind and the man that visits next door every night and all of them in traffic today and that I passed on the sidewalk and the produce guy who asked me if I was finding everything ok in the grocery store and having to look at them differently today, matching silhouettes to a shadow that last night was 3 inches from my belly button.
The low-grade fence behind the house is caved in from a clumsy leap over it. I know where he went but don't know if that's where he came from.