Come closer, squish your face against the windowpane, and let me trace the pale outline of your cheek with my finger.
Doesn’t it feel safe?
It does for me.
And when you remove your face from the glass you leave behind a greasy stain, and I can continue fingering your outline for hours on end until you return.
Sometimes I pace around my room in the dark while I frantically, and with a harsh jerking of the neck, look at the window to check it every time I pass.
It glows with a cool blue light, and it is filled with outlines of the faces, the faces I caress.
Whenever I lie on my side in the bed, with my legs tugged up under me, resting my head on my stretched out arm, and my hand in a ninety degree angle, I do not surrender willingly to sleep.
I keep my eyes on the glass.
I lie in fear of blinking.
I lie in fear of absence of the light.
When I finally close my eyes there is nothing but an unending parade of rooms.
The faces do not press themselves up against the windows in here, in here I am alone, and I have no outlines to trace. I am separated from the light and the glass by the lids in front of my eyes.
Bathed in sweat I awake.
I keep my mouth open, ready to scream, but nothing ever comes out. My breathing is too shallow to create the explosion, so instead I chew on the air, like a fish lying on shore. Trying to make sure that the mechanics aren’t broken I feel for the rising motion of my chest, resting my hands on my ribs. The sensation of touch confirms that the function is maintained.
The blue window attracts more faces.
Their breaths fog op the glass.
‘Something is not right. Something seems off.’ The thought is fleeting, and even though the feeling lingers longer than the thought it too soon dissolves over the faces in the blue light. I take my hands off my increasingly protruding ribs and press them against the light making two stark silhouettes of something human on top something less than that.
There is something between the face and my hands, something that draws my finger to the cheek every time. It pulls on my elbow, it commands my sinew, and it makes my brain fire its neurons. I slip my tongue over my lips and spread saliva on the dried skin, feeling the rough edges as the organ goes from one end of the orifice to the other.
Nothing else lies outside my room and the surface of the window.
I continue living, forever haunted by the thought that the blue light one day might fade and disappear.