waking in the dark
"My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tambours I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony."
- - The Book of Disquiet - Fernando Pessoa
staring up, the third light in the bouquet of three flickered and went out - i am still holding myself in for the sad small popping sound, like something interior breaking under pressure and over-use.
I push the movable light around my gray walls, telling the story of the bird I thought you were and the feathers I feel under my skin, tracing this rough history and making it smooth with my handful of solitude. I wake up and my high window rattles with the beat-beating of wings against the glass and I smile into my pillow and re-dream misty headed dreams that pool at my feet when I swing them out of the covers and onto the unsettled, settling floor. I reach for the switch and everything is bright and somehow shaded, and I have pushed away these thoughts that save me like opening curtains to show the shadows of the night before for a pile of clothes, a mess of paper, my coat on the door.
There is too much that is permanent, too many far-off variables that stalk my hand reaching across the table for the pen, or the bottle, or the book. I write letters and tear them up, wrap my chewing gum in the pieces or wash my jeans with them still clinging to the pockets. I am learning about bones and the way to tell stories, I am insatiable and sedate and none of the above. I remember Spring and, for the first time, I crave the kind of light it brings with it.
I can not tell you, you would not want to know.