I am dumb while I stare at these hands
Gaze on this face
Muted by this strange pink that is usually so familiar.
I can’t help but laugh… silently
at the seaming illusion that’s my own line
My own form
My own splotches of yellows, reds and grays.
Forgetting myself, losing myself in the way that is not comforting
or freeing.
Not like that world that I daydreamed in my childhood.
That world I was so convinced existed somewhere just out of my vision.
That I could touch if I only held my breath long enough or stared long enough at the gossamer strands lacing the sunlight.
Instead, it is muted. Dull, without a glistening pulse or familiar rhythm.
An absence of…something. Like that place you land when you fall between wake and sleep and before your body jerks you awake.
I want to wake.
I want to feel vital. Alive. Thrilled.
Moved to action.
Moved to touch
Moved to tears
or screams
or gut splitting laughter.
But, I am muted. Not even truly restless.
But that ache is there. That ache to reach past this thick, viscous, wall
That’s coated my flesh, my innards my breath with nauseating stillness.
That ache is my hope. My solace. My resolution that this will pass.
That this is only a moment.
A moment poised in stillness, while my body rests in emptiness.