Your Fossil

A wisp of smoke snags, caught as if in a spider web, then breaks apart–fractals of light and color, kaleidoscope….Struggling to stand as the air thickens, voices chattering incoherently. In the mirror before me, mother and sister laugh. How am I like them? I must stand. Stand. Wisps of smoke again. A few shaky steps to the bed. I hear you, chemical, as you hiss. Your hand reaches forth below me, through my spine, into my stomach and pulls me down. Down with vibrating electric. The ten times strength in little black crystals and I witness your power–breath catching in near panic, wondering….When will you release me from this pulsating grip, icy devil claws? The room is only a fragile box, suspended in space, as always, but now I notice. Try to breathe. Covers crinkle beneath my touch. Feel the heaviness of this undulating dimension. Silence. The white walls shimmer. Smoke rises from the carpet, like a field of weeds swaying in the wind.

What does any of it mean? What does anything mean if I only exist here, alone, just like all this before me. Will I evaporate into nothingness, just like this drug when the last grains of sand fall through the hourglass to join the ever growing collection of discarded days below?

Reach for the pad of paper and pen resting on the nightstand, feeling my insides stretch over themselves. I am on a leash. Somehow, I must leave something behind here. Remember me. Remember this…this me within this. Record the electric before it fades, before I am removed from this moment. Words and sketches. There’s never a true way to capture these fleeting images, notions, intensities arising from nerves I never realized existed until now. The motions are strange. This handwriting, I do not recognize. Distorted. Interrupted from the me I rarely get to see from another angle. Through this prism, now I see you. Honest.

Suddenly, music arises from deep within the soul of this realm. Wishing to press “record.” All I can do is watch, listen as nameless notes rise and fall around me, concealed in folds as time becomes unhinged and falls down like a curtain to the floor.

Focus. Try to focus. Lines weave over the paper, not bound by previous notion. I am new. Disconnected from whom I know myself to be, whomever time and events have made me. The bindings have been cut. I am only now. Only an instrument of this electric. Weightless and pulsating. A being with no past, no future. I only exist here. 

The notes become form on the paper. Smoke draws for me. What is time, spirit, or wind? They act, unseen, like a fetus and real only to those who are entwined within an intimate notion.

More lines emerge and the shape of this feeling becomes clearer as it courses through, changing direction, a fleeting feeling, a shift in a mood. I recognize consciousness as if through a dream. Far away, yet deeply real.

Sparks explode into darkness, begin again. I crawl inside and expand their light, focusing on short moments, times I interacted with a small piece of myself–a place where there is nothing until it is imagined and shared in a physical space. I want that moment to remain, crystalized, soaked in formaldehyde after I have passed by. And when I view it again, it will be different because I am different from when I felt it then, every snapshot pastel, dreamy, smeared as time pulls away, carrying its spark to light the next present.

More lines. This picture is nearly complete. Lavender stars unfolding in a rising tower, you arise from within, icy demon. I see your knobby fingers, sharp pointy nails. Your face is a smear, but your eyes glow in violet. Electric expands from your core and through me, through your grasp. My eyes should be wide, but I look calm. My face is not mine, but the one you’ve drawn for me. My new face for my new self. The self that is only the essence of what I was originally and what I would be without moments stacking below me. Below me, only picture frames with broken glass. Smoke curling all around, like folklórico dancers’ skirts. The nameless notes floating throughout. My box of a room, floating in space. My lips are blue, as if experiencing a winter frost. 

The heaviness of the atmosphere about me persists. Notes patter away like the last few drops of a rain shower disturbing the puddle it created. And I am here. Still. How much more of this resonance can I endure? This room is all there is of my world, this overwhelming control still expanding me through me. Forever or even more is hardly an option here. My skin is swollen with your expansion. I feel my spine vibrate like strings of a violin as the bow glides over them, back and forth, sound ever expanding this special space and I wonder, when you take your frosty finger away, will the same note remain, perpetuated into the future?

I am still now. I wait. Encased in and at the mercy of your dimension. Then, as suddenly as you crept up, I feel you falling away. I return to myself like a hand that has fallen asleep. The extremeness of the difference you caused, ripples through my senses. I shiver. Swallow. Close my eyes, still unsure. Will I return to me? Feel the reassuring dullness of baseline seeping through like a crisp spring breeze. Open my eyes. The air becomes lighter. Now, I stand with ease. You recoil into the dimension from which you emerged. I sigh. Now, I am someone I recognize. Someone with a past and a future. Controlled by a familiar reality. I regard the clock radio. Its red numbers tell me only fifteen minutes have elapsed. I retrieve the pad of paper from the bed. I stare at the drawing. Whispers of a world so unlike the one I know–your imprint, your fossil.