It was a Sunday morning. Not even really a morning yet; the room was too warm, so even without a shirt, dressed in mesh shorts, I was sweating. There was a bag of Nestle's butterscotch chips sitting on one corner of my desk. They smelled almost sickly in their sweetness. I could hear every breath I took. Junk littered my desk from loose pens and paper to plastic wear, a bag of tea and a Japanese tebutsin, sans lid and sieve.
The heater rasped, even turned off, pouring a gentle wave of too warm into the room.
Above it, I could still hear my own breathing, head resting on my arm, contemplating the empty book sitting beside me.
I liked to write.
My eyes were heavy.
I still liked to write.
I never said how much I hated that sweater. It was hand knit, patterned on the tides of the ocean.
Blue-green like sea-foam. Soft. I think it was cashmere. Maybe alpaca. Something gentle. Something...soft.
I didn't like it, the way I never liked the empty bottles sitting on my desk. They were all glass with aluminum tops. I kidded myself for a long time, called them water bottles. They actually did have water in the sometimes, but only after the soda had run out. And the scent of frozen sugar lingered, to tease the senses whenever I tried to drink the lukewarm excuse.
But I always did like the teas on my desk, even when they took up the most space. Samples in bags. I'd say "Forgive the mess," but I never really meant it. The mess was part of me. Part of everything, and if a visitor couldn't recognize it as service... Well, no visitors ever really returned.
And I always kept tea in white bags, their insides drenched with silver foil. If I looked hard enough I may have been able to see my face reflected.
Then again, maybe not.
Bags of tea were like souls...
And mine never reflected much at all.
There were photographs, too. I was in all of them, brimming over with confidence, my posture claiming center stage. I was always center stage with the short hair and clinging clothing. A smile that never quite reached my eyes.
Unless all the photographers made the same mistake in developing and erased the sparkles of joy.
I never came out and said what a horribele place the lab had been, or what dirty work my summer job required. But there was a USB cable on my desk, coiled and waiting to strike. It was by the used books from the ancient past - tales of heroes who made mistakes. Stories of the men who died because of them.
Or the magazine clippings, splayed out with cartooned faces moving through panels that narrated a life story in short blocks. "And then this happened," the way things do in knitting patterns.
My knitting needles were off in their own corner, secluded.
I only said "I love you" on those few occasions where it could have meant something, but never when it did.
There was an empty box of mints as another adornment to the desk. Its bleakness complimented the desk stains. The scissors. My leather pace carrying pens in all different inks. A quartet of races that got along just fine when the lights were on.
My eyes were heavy and I was tired. A door slammed, somewhere, off in the distance. The heater was still buzzing. Maybe it was tomorrow already.
There were needles and bits of shine hidden in plain sight, but the beginnings of what led to an end could but flounder.
I needed to cut my nails. Dead skin, oil and blood. Maybe ink. That was the gift under the nails. Maybe I had written on the walls and proclaimed a return from anonymity. Maybe someone in the surrounding one should have been visiting. And there were voices, half-way away, cheering for what never happened.
And voices closer wondering why there was blood on my shoulder. Asking about the stains in the desk. Telling me to stop.
The ceasefire came around midnight, when the world unrolled itself for a moment of splendor. I hated sunsets and told them so, but the ones in white assured me it was a beginning, not an end.
My desk was still messy, but I stood and walked away. I had cards in my pockets - a deck from Reno, Nevada - only played once. The Queen of Spades was on top of the deck, ripped neatly in two.
Under it was the Ace of Spades.
Nearly noting nothing.
Sleep.
I was tired, even with the promises of future.
And maybe the voices guessed my preoccupation.
We were still.
Only still.
There came a knocking at the door, and voices outside the voices. They were curious voices, shrieking with delighted laughter. Perhaps a demented soundtrack to add to any music player.
My notebook closed and I stood up in another room, only to sit down. It was our empty hall, filled with the warmth of well talled wood, offset by a gentle silver. From above the chandeliers glistened and my notebook shifted focus. Tea out of its packet in a china cup sat. The water was only ukewarm, but the glass burned my hands. A thin ribbon in black wound its way around, flirting with the packaging for pens.
There was the tap-tap-tap of fee,t and the squeal of a vhair beeing moved too shoftly. A salt shaker played by itself. Pepper had abandoned her for the box of napkins.
And this time I wasn't alone.
Someone else was there, sitting, just reading. Occasionally a page turned. Sometimes he even breathed. But rarely, and the laughter behind me - feminine, high - obscured it, even over the tap-tap-tap of and squeals.
I had to think when I took a sip of tea. The cup no longer burned my hands. But there was someone dressed in green, smiling. Someone who was losing parts of himself since junior year. High school? Thirty little separate parts of himself.
And across the room, the chairs began to talk to one another. The actor with sideburns and glasses, and always in a scarf.
A newspaper wlaked by, holding a plastic cup of tea, and the chairs moved respectuflly out of his way. Too many men in too small a space. Or too large, since there were so few.
One girl with curly hair sat in a corner, buttering bread and smiling while the knife looked about to cry.
The laughter again. Feminine, high. Then a gentle baritone addition. I was still tired.
"I enjoy just sleeping," the actor's friend said. He appeared when no one was looking. He wore glasses too, and had the etchings of sideburns.
Forks tapped plates relentlessly.
Until the plates relented.
Then spoons tapped bowls and knives, cups unti leveryone gave in. Except exhaustion who only ever lingers. Stays awake and croons us through from sleep til dawn.
But even so, I never really liked the farmer's market corn. And maybe my eyes were heavy and sleep could have been a good idea if I felt like putting in the effort to remain awake later on in the here-after. Slurred vision, seeing double? I thought that meant trouble, but it really must meant sleep required.
More untril I stopped halucinating midday into imagining people there who weren't there and people who were, not.
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