I've got a cupboard with cans of food
Filtered water, and pictures of you
And I'm not coming out until this is all over.
I have a habit of waking up in pure clarity. At these moments in darkness, I know my own existence more so than when I'm going about my daily business. This feeling has replaced dread. This is the notion of oblivion like a sheet of hot water, so searing that it almost feels cold.
And I'm looking through the glass, where the light bends at the cracks
Then I am reminded that I am here, I am real, I am in my skin. In the gray light of early morning my thighs are pale loaves, my head is grotesque, a projecting stalk. Yet this is all beauty ever has been, and ever will be: protoplasm molded and forged like flowing metal.
And I'm screaming at the top of my lungs
Pretending the echoes belong to someone
Someone I used to know.
The twilight between sleep and waking is a realm of strangeness, potent and tangible. When two friends or lovers mumble to one another, and neither recalls the conversation later, who has spoken? It is as if our bodies are borrowed at night. Brains defragmented, memories shifted around. Our language is poorly translated, its symbology muddled.
And we become silhouettes
When our bodies finally go.
James is huddled in a corner, eyes darting back and forth like those of a dreaming man. His head is cocked oddly to one side. I put a pillow beneath his neck, and just for a moment he reaches up and squeezes two of my fingers. This is more contact than I've had from him in over a week, and it makes me glow like a torch.
I want to walk through the empty streets
For something constant under my feet
But all the news reports recommended I stay indoors.
Sometimes I'm sorely tempted to remove the data terminal from his head, but that wouldn't be fair. He's getting quite skilled at these games, and a high score means a sense of accomplishment. And he hasn't been staying plugged in as long recently. About a month after we got down here and sealed the doors, James began spending more and more time playing that game. He would unplug only to eat, sleep, and use the toilet.
Because the air outside will make
Our cells divide at an alarming rate
Til our shells simply cannot hold our insides in
I have had enough of computers for the time being. Give me pencils and paper, and I will fill the square sheets with scratchings until the pencils wear away. Give me a painted window and I'll find pinpoints of light. I'll take a stone room and a cot and a can of Family Protein Emergency Food Supplement, and I'll force my notions of Paradise upon them. Does this make me better than James?
And that's when we'll explode
No. It probably makes me more of an idiot. Even Shakespeare knew it: life is a play. Later, armchair philosophers would postulate that we're all just avatars in a game. These are not radical ideas, but timeless ideas that were cliches before they were even spoken. A hand is an abstraction of what it is capable off. Wet orbs in sockets are praised in sonnets.
And it won't be a pretty sight.
Plugged-in boy loves me. He is subtle in his affections, but they are there with a brush on my lips and an involuntary sigh.
He is unhooking the jack from his head and stretching his limbs. Now he is smiling and asking to see my pictures. He's gotten the high score.
"I'm done with that game," He raises an eyebrow at me, and I cannot hide my elation.
If there were space enough to run, I'd skip across this concrete room like it was a field of summer daisies. Instead, I take a single step into artificial light and the warmth of metabolism and slow change.
And we become silhouettes
When our bodies finally go.
Lyrics from "We Will Become Silhouettes" by The Postal Service.
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