“Why bother using completely perfect words when no one listens to anything other than their own brains bleating out requests to the HOT HITS 100 COSMIC RADIOWAVE network of Noobanian Narcolepsist Narcicily anyway?” She thought this to herself pleasantly and frequently as if it were an anthem, as if it were one of those missing pages of the script she so regularly lost in the middle of the night, in the middle of that dream where the stage is prepared, and the lights are cued, and the audience has arrived, and she’s properly costumed, coiffed and cornered down center on the chaise and wordless. She has forgotten the words. She can see them, in her mind’s eye, there on the page, just as she rehearsed and yet they aren’t making the tail end of the trajectory that is to lead to the tip of her tongue, across teeth and to the patiently waiting patrons in the galleries of congregations below. Yes. Why bother. But here, in the lights and lingering particles of past participles and pieces of evaporated liquid synthetic air, she is rising to an occasion she cannot remember; but the feel of it is oh so familiar. There is another, nearby. Reach—reach out a hand to him, he may have it. Yes, that’s right. You do you understand, I’ve completely forgotten my lines. Do you, by any chance, have the script? The end of an overture, red shifting into amber; eyes. Eyes on me.
It was her moment, the cue had been given. She was taking it alright. And in that moment of pause and breath and candor and gaze: a gesture. As fine and clear and poignant and poised and pregnantly passing as a slightly cupped hand lifting to cover her mouth but arrested mid flight and then falling: a finger. Point—no, wave. Yes, smile—no, search. With the eyes. Who is that, over there? Across the way in the pea coat through the fog (or is it mist?) in the distant fading chug of the train’s engine as it pulls away…. They followed her, flourished in light of her remissnesses. They breathed with her. She stepped closer. Here I am. Now. Predictably, the darkened figure with the woolen shoulders shifted close. A strange smelling fog lifted its menacing smoky tentacles as the amber glow grew milky, indigo, confusing. Do you have my script? Or can you just whisper my lines, the first word? It’s here, I feel it. I forgot. SNAP! ow.
Her jaw cracked into itself snapping teeth and biting cheeks. She felt her legs against the weight of the covers, the down beneath her head. Peeking out of an eye the room was yet dark. Relief deepened her breath. There was still time. Time to start over. Why bother trying to figure anything out when none of it meant anything anyway. It was just a dream. Yes, the same dream. But it was dumb. There is no reason to keep ruminating over one’s remnants as if any nutritive content can be squeezed, can be gleaned or eked or whatever out of the detritus of dailyness. Who cares? She found her way free from the tangle of bedclothes and, stepping on a pile of blanket, felt her shoulder collide into the wall as equilibrium sloshed up against the inside of her left temple. Are you serious? Wow. Just hurry up and get through the toilet and glass of water routine and go back. Rewind. Where were we. Ah yes. Rest.
In 48 minutes the alarming false chimes of cell tone bells will signal six am. Then snooze will measure the interim between stage and screen, wake and dream. Then rolling once more to the floor will become socking and pantsing and shirting. Some water on face, some paste, some spray. And opening the garage door the dawning yawn will rush in with the frozen smog beneath her. How safe is it to go from snoozing to driving in less than 16 minutes? She will switch on the news and ignore it as she hurls insults to the road: Driveyoufuckingretardswhatthehellgetouttatheroadifyouregonnadothat.Asshole. Shit. Skid. Stop. Go. Again and again until she reaches the end of her line. And maybe she would see demon truck again. Where does he go? If only there were time to break from the day, to follow the steaming coal-black mass to its cave, its burrow, its den, its pit. There might have been a time when he could have seen her, too. Although the windows never really made it possible to truly look inside.
The dump, brimming with ebony cinders, smoked as it lurched across the intersection. Inky lenses made for a poor windshield. No matter. Her fascination was more with the hulking truck beast than its operator. Although wrapped tight in her own little machine and far across the street, she always imagined she smelled it. The coal. Still warm from the belly of the plant, she felt its densely acrid fumes. She longed to know the taboo toxins. It was a sliver of sickness this imp of the perverse—not so strong as to actually ever draw her fully into the sea-foamed wake when standing at the bow of a ship, nor push her off the edge of roofs, nor make her actually eat dirt when imagining its gritty crystals in her mouth. How can it be so black? This is blackness at its blackest black core. And she was appreciating black and smoke and tendrils that smell sharp and rise in one’s nose when one is set to appear, yes, here. No, there: just another ¼ turn down. Cheat out. Reveal your face. That’s it! She remembered. This is the way it is always done. From the outside in you move with the melting away of effort, of grasping and flow. Yes: with. With. With.
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