Everything

Everything is sped up, except the time. The time stays steady and constant as the world and I thrum around it, thrumming and thrumming until something clicks to make us stop. Through the speed I see shapes and visions and memories and moments just out of my reach and I feel like running to catch them. But I can't run. I can't stand. It gets light then, lighter and airier than it is already - and it is very light. I do not feel that I am inside this body and this body doesn't feel me. I keep thrumming with the world.

Everything is erratic, everything flicks out and snatches and catches at the air. I catch at my teeth as the words try to slip through, out of their cage and into the space in front. It is not the words and the mouth that misbehave; it is the letters and the fingers that tap out their treachery and I can do nothing to stop them. They just keep tapping and tapping and tapping and I keep thrumming with the world.

Everything is twisted, wrong and the wall doesn't look like it should do. Instead it stares out, each small lump gazing at me and following as I move. All the colours seem to have changed in this haste, as if they might be different when I'm not looking but quickly turn back so that I don't see them. I'm too fast for them now. I'm too fast and they're forgetting and they're different. The words on my wall pulse, they want to be read, they want to be known. I won't look at them, scared they may not say the things that I'm used to, worried that their words might twist and become darker. They're changing and twisting and they just keep tapping and tapping and tapping and I keep thrumming with the world.

Everything is so loud but there is nothing but the unfamiliar music drifting in and out of my ears, and the tapping. Still there is a buzzing inside my head and my room and the space around. Sometimes the familiar sounds creep up and shock me, I don't expect them but they come anyway and I find myself clinging to the strings between this body and I. If all was quiet and this music was away from my senses I would be forced to listen to the silence and the walls would continue to stare and I would shrink smaller and smaller until I was no more. But the music keeps playing. There is a buzzing in my head and they're changing and twisting and they just keep tapping and tapping and tapping and I keep thrumming with the world.

Everything breathes a scent remembered but it runs away and it doesn't let me hold it and recognise it as I should. I can't find it when it hides between the clutterings of this room; I know it's there but it slips past, it doesn't want me to find it. And I don't want to make it angry, so I let it slip. It keeps sliding away and between and there is a buzzing in my head and they're changing and twisting and they just keep tapping and tapping and tapping and I keep thrumming with the world.

Everything feels alive, my fingers recoil as if bitten and they don't stay in the same place for too long. They can't. They don't want to be caught and I don't want them to either. I don't understand why these living things are so eager to hurt and scrape and I don't understand why they're not moving. They stay still but I don't want to turn away. Just in case. They bite at me and it keeps sliding away and between and there is a buzzing in my head and they're changing and twisting and they just keep tapping and tapping and tapping and I keep thrumming with the world.

Everything is angry and sad and malovent but it still grins and emits happiness - so much so that it must still feel it. Everything is mixed up in this room and nothing knows where it's going and my body seems far away. I want to move towards it, to reclaim it like I should but everything is strange and I and my body keep moving further apart without meaning to. My voice doesn't work, I want to speak but nothing happens. It is still there, sitting in the back of my throat along with my body but I can't make my body use it, we're too far away. I want to tell everything to calm and to move back to their normal places and colours and sounds but I can't and I'm stuck here. It grins and they bite at me and it keeps sliding away and between and there is a buzzing in my head and they're changing and twisting and they just keep tapping and tapping and tapping and I keep thrumming with the world.

And I'm stuck here.

I, she, we

I watch her, she moves differently and she thinks differently and she is not entirely there. And I watch her. I cannot say where I am; I've never been here before and I cannot tell you its name. She and I are connected, we hear, we see, we speak, we breathe the same and yet, I can't understand her. Not now. Not as I drift behind and I watch.

I'm out and she is in; we should be together but something separates us, something we can't see. We can feel it there, like a thin sheet not substantial enough to block out the warmth of our identical features. She is the concrete and I the abstract. It is a wrong sensation, it does not fit with what we know; we do not fit with what we know, we are different.

We move now, together, but still there is a breath between us and we remain separate. We remain two.

In this moment, I don't recall that normal sensation of being only one.

Empty

It's a wonder what a few books will do when neatly lined up on the mantle piece.

There shall be no sleep here tonight. This room is changed. Though everything is still present, it sits it different places and the light falls in different ways - the shadows take different shapes. It is new. There can be no comfort in new things.

Though drowsiness pulls attentively at the eyelids, there will be no sleep.

Facial Bookcase

It's handy, having this bookcase in the corner of my room where I keep all of your faces. Each and every one of you grins up at me, right at my fingertips. I don't even need to leave this room with all of the company I need, right here, on the shelves.

But I don't touch you, your faces, staring back at me, would grimace at a touch and a pull from your place on your shelf. It is forbidden.

I don't need to touch or to hear, not with my bookcase stood mightily, over there. All I need is to catch sight of the right face at the right time and everything is right - no need to talk. You tell me things, each one of you, with your unchanging faces and I know it's true because it is there, laying before my eyes. Seeing is believing.

Without my shelves and your faces I would be completely disconnected, cut from the interaction. It is such craved interaction that everyone is here, everyone of you, staring at me from the bookcase.

My face creases into a smile and you all smile back as I sit here, staring at you as you stare at me. We're so together, connected. We never need to leave this room.

Frequency

It does weird things to my head, this song. My ear seems to hone in to something that shouldn't be there. Perhaps, it is a message, a hidden frequency meant for only those who are in tune with it, with the sound.

Long shadows lure you in...

It is neither pleasant nor unpleasant but no instrument nor voice could make it. My ears strain each time they try to hear, as if it isn't there and it's only my imagination. And what if it is?

The more you look the less you see...

Pursed lips and a furrowed brow, face like a raisin lacking in colour - what a picture. But it's still there, that sound.

So close your eyes and start to breathe...

Ah! The song alters, slips into its ending with a change - the sound is gone. The hidden frequency. And I'm in tune.