Sometime after she had scrubbed the silence out from under her fingernails, she put the kettle on and sat down at the kitchen table, where she began to eat sleep. She took small bites at first, nibbling at the edges, until the center spilled into her mouth and coated her teeth. When it had eased down her throat, her eyes rolled back and her lashes clasped one another. Toppling from her chair, she dreamt of satellites, the wires racing like stalactites from television sets, radios, machines of every kind-- dripping sinister sparks and emitting faraway sounds, like so many small animals crying out. Surrounded, piled beneath shredded tires and gears and circuits, she inhaled. Polyester air, the inescapable rubbish heap, a trash island of towers and turrets. She wanted nothing more than to wake up in her bed, covered in soft things, feeling one warm leg against the other, the sounds of the surfaces around her settling in space.
Hours later, she awoke with a terrible headache on the kitchen floor; the pots and pans hanging from the ceiling had loosened themselves and toppled down upon her. All the water in the kettle had boiled away, and the bottom had melted onto the stove, adhering itself forever to the burner.
But she could still feel the weight of all the sleep she had eaten continuing
its relentless expansion inside her stomach.
