22

...And as I turned over, uncomfortable with every position I found and, consequently, unable to sleep, I stared at the ever so slightly fluttering eyelashes at my shoulder like two black humming birds; my eyes having thus become comfortable in the darkness. I thought of the numerous tears that had fallen from them and onto that still cheek now only moving with the ebb and flow of the entire body bobbing along the rhythm of a steady, sleep-laden breath. Rivers and oceans of tears, perhaps, had preceded this night: the calm after a life-long storm, I imagined. In that moment, it was as if I had crossed a threshold into the memory of another through a wormhole provided by my imagination alone. A theoretical life flashing before my eyes that was not my own and one that I was never meant to be privy to, as if I had read a novel in progress only to realize at the end that it was a private diary. Vividly dancing before me were family dinners, recording sessions, fights, break-ups, parties, nights made inseparable by their chaos and days that made inseparable by their banality. An entire life, start to finish, played before me in an accidental slide show. And with all this came a newly discovered futility. To watch someone suffer in their past is to watch a child drowning from afar. And as you run, the most you know you are capable of doing is to endure that heartbreak and hope instinct kicks in.

It was as though I was staring down into a cavernous well in which darkness nearly consumed the bottom but one that was just shallow enough to see the water disturbed by the rain. The nostalgia and the sadness of witnessing such a sight becomes overpowering. One man's sorrows would crack Atlas's vertebrae sooner than any tectonic shift. I found myself tumbling down...

...And when I blinked away a tear, I was staring at serenity being softly disturbed by dreams of another world. Again, I shifted position, my side hurting from some inexplicable weight. My view was no longer of the two humming birds but of a heaven whitewashed and devoid of constellations. Some lights flickered from the few cars braving the West Side Highway at such an ungodly hour of the night. My own eyelids slowly became heavier with nothing to focus on while my breathing became steadier and though I dreaded the onslaught of whatever my subconscious had prepared for its entertainment, I also welcomed that little death as I did any other night.

-- Auditory Inspiration: Capote Soundtrack - Mychael Danna --