Backwards Sidewalk

Jack Burden spent valuable pages describing the great sleep. The moment where there doesn't seem to be much to do, but you know there are endless needs you must attend to. So before the sun has finished toasting the landscape, you draw the curtains, pull up the covers, and hide from the particles twirling in the failing light.

I can't seem to wake up.

Every day when I pull into my driveway, I turn my head ever so slightly while searching for my keys and stomping down the walk. I can't look at that rusty fortuneteller that stands guard at the edge of the street.

Part of me wants the university so badly. Part of me would kill for a big fat envelope in the mail.

But part of me secretly desires for that small modest paper of deferment.

I see my body falling apart in front of my eyes. The scale numbers keep climbing. I can't breathe anymore. The inhaler gives me Parkinson's for hours, but it still beats out the uncertainty of my latest breath reaching my lungs.

I study. I still don't compete at my level. At least when you don't bother to stay up late poring over problems and breathing in the metallic smell of graphite and measuring the time in clicks for more lead, you don't have to admit to yourself that you just didn't understand it.

I still pay homage to 20 milligrams every night. I know I am depressed only because my body is shutting down on me. I know I am sad solely because I don't want to be awake. I can feel an electric current running through me, pulling as hard as it can against the medicine.

I'm just barely at bay.

I don't know where this came from. It snuck up on me. Books can hardly pull me away from reality anymore. Awareness of worthlessness pulls me off Jack Burden's porch on the landing with Anne Stanton. Their summer heat and cicada thrum and blanket of mimosa smell cannot keep me like it used to.

So I turn off the light, and I go to sleep.