one and a half intimations about one thing

i.
room 731. the number on the door is written in gold. i am asleep for a day and a half. i am dead to the world, and as far as i am concerned, the world is dead to me. but all around, the things that make up the conspiracy of my fiction move about without movement, breathe the air i breathe and weave the dreams i am too afraid to dream. they are like pieces of a puzzle that try to put themselves together in the dark when nobody is watching.

the huge television sings a haunting lullaby of stocks, oil prices, benazir bhutto, the situation in the middle east, the fire in my city that claims the homes of 400 families and kills a two-year-old girl.

the marble floor grows cold without my bare footsteps, the ones it has come to crave. marble against naked sole is like poetry that pierces.

the bathtub is an orphan. without my scented bubbles, it is only a recess. an absence. a break in a perfect line. a white hollow in an antiseptic room where every accoutrement—the fancy hotel soap, the shampoo, the lotion, the bathrobe, the hair dryer—has its place.

the mini bar is saturated with spirits. the markup is astounding. each small bottle comes with a she-devil of drunken revelry. one spirit in exchange for your soul.

the glass window, the one which knows my secrets, is the giant eye that watches me in slumber. every shift of hip, every kick of limb is like a betraying twitch to its interrogating gaze.

i am warm in naught but my skin, except for the medallion that hangs from my neck, burning sub-zero messages into my body. in my subconscious, i feel my endymion beside me. his fingers are in my hair, tousled like love. he is awake. simply because he is always awake when i sleep.

it's strange how things seem to change in a day (and a half).

it's strange how i feel like my exhaustions, my passions, my indiscretions, my compunctions have deflowered the pure white sheets.

i/2.
i make love to my dark angel. he has dark hair and the expression of one who is always searching but never finding. sometimes, during that soft collision of our breaths, i lose him. i am offended by that faraway look in his eyes.

his subtle utterances are followed by mine. until the metamorphosis. until he changes into my worst nightmare. he weeps at my hesitation. and his words, stamped indelibly on the pages in my hand, flow through my fingers like an arthropod's salty tears.

i love reading in bed. but i find kafka is never a good bedtime story. (consider yourself warned.) and so with great regret, i bid my dark angel goodnight.

as the last of the lamps is extinguished, there is a soft whisper as my clothes—those trappings of vanity eve carried with her—fall away. the moment i close my eyes is the moment evening begins. it is a sacred, self-imposed death.

i am dead to the world, and as far as i am concerned, the world is dead to me. i am asleep for a day and half. the number on the door is written in gold. room 731.

i rode north at 11:01 PM