It’s either the cups of coffee or the swell of electricity in my chest that cause this restlessness, this cold-sweat inability to sit still. My ankles crack as they move, splintering their somnolence. « You have your feet on the ground », I am told, but this phrase is a translation. Somewhere between the indecisive temperature of days and the repeated incantations of songs that guard against too much feeling, the original sentence dissipated; a breath without smoke.
Now my cup of coffee is empty, echoing. A familiar regret ebbs in and out of my mind, a perpetual white noise harmonizing with my anxiety. This din is deafening, but if I tune it out the silence will be worse. So the room becomes heavier, the wood of the floor splinters into distorted chords. Within these atonal walls, even my own humming is distant, as it should be. Heaped upon the gravitational stillness of the furniture, the mute houseplants and photographs do not move in the wind that cannot enter through the closed window. Barely perceptible, the only motion in this house comes from faint tones that resound, sotto voce, inside hollow things— pots and pans suspended from the ceiling.
