3:14 am

Questions.

Do you know why I am here? It’s been so long. I don’t really know where else I would go. I didn’t think I would be back. I never thought I would be anywhere else.

Visions.

So visceral and bright they blur into blinding white light that I cant see past. Disoriented fractals burn my optic nerves. I just want to see. I get migraines from the fluorescents but refuse to turn off the lights. Action potentials surge relentlessly along axons; synaptic clefts overflow with neurotransmitters; this anomalous paralysis consumes me. There is nothing to do here.

Potential.

Choke me, passively. It trickles into my mouth and pools in the back of my throat. I refuse to swallow it. I will never spit it out. I let it sit there, suspended in stasis, to spite it for ever coming in.

Drowning.

I will not be forced to take action. My indolence will probably kill me one day.

Indecision.

For as long as I can remember. Inaction is inherent in my structure; motionlessness, molecularly encoded. Still I seek it, hiding within it; some kind of Ixodida, idle and greedy. I want all of it but won’t choose any of it. I will sit and wait for the pebbles to grow legs and walk to me.

Divine Intervention.

I want it gift-wrapped by God, impossibly neat, easy to open, and delivered to my feet. There are so many pathways, but I won’t choose any of them. I catalyze and supplicate. Anything is better than this stagnancy, but still I refuse. Sometimes I wonder if I was born without the anatomy made for listening, or perhaps more accurately, completely lacking a temporal lobe. Or frontal lobe, for that matter. Something is missing.

One Day.

I will be old, stagnant and decaying. Rotten in the Meadow. Bugs will burrow and fungi will bloom. Finally there will be motion: life will take over, and I will be forced to concede. I wonder whether I’ll be content as they gorge? Swallowing tympanic membrane, grey matter, and stagnancy.

Dorothea Blythe