You are alone

You are alone, noticing the solitude in spells, you fall asleep, you dont change from sleep to consciousness. You are surrounded, scribbling on the inside of a windowless body. Asleep or awake there is nothing outside of it. Lamps show brown light with a grain that you feel needling outward on your skin and eyelids. It doesnt cast shadows. In between the light is nothing. It is still raining. Someone through the apartment is turning out lights as they move until the darkness is clear enough that you see your legs out before you. A stria of crystalline light points from a back hallway, across your bare feet, and up the inside of the front door. An icy corona lines the ajar door, fluorescent light playing off of cold surfaces, mirrors, tile, water. A pair of shoes in the foreground. Feet, stacked ankle on ankle over the threshold of the opening.

You look across the counter into the kitchen. Rain light in streaks faintly glistens on a place setting, and several rings of keys. A long chino skirt and tunic drape over the back of a chair. Coupon circulars, alms requests, clearing-house booklets, and real estate takeaways are stacked and gathered in a paper band. Something is written into the condensation on the window, across the crown of the street tree shaking in the rain. The apartment is too empty and prepared. The things that are in it make it feel emptier, more abandoned, already. It looms ahead of you. Another predictable sunrise, awake somewhere strange, or make your way there through the night and sleep through the dawn. Walk into sleep. Walk away.


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