44

Slip into sleep with your eyes still open, fall asleep sitting there on the sofa, television telling you its stories, the world moving unchanged through the cosmos. You awake a stranger, awake later than you thought it was in the wrong room, the wrong movie dully playing, the world having spun its way into night. It is the sharp sameness that makes these dull differences. Another year, all the worse for wear. Another year, clasping some absence, waking up alone on a couch in the dark.

Outside the wind is up. You make a note of it, as you measure every change in the weather. Like you had flocks in the field to tend to. Like you had crops in the row to worry. Hands in pockets, you slide into the ragged slippers you must have shed in your sleep. Knotted feet and rough toes tangle with fabrics you never bothered to identify, and together, feet and slippers, you shamble along the mystery of the floor. Open the fridge, swallow too much cold water. Will you wait until now to founder? Will this be the moment you choose to drown?

A slice of cake, some cold pizza. Take a moment to draw the blinds. Never stand backlit by an open window. Always know how your shape might be noted in the night. You sit down again, out of ideas and impulses. You turn on a light, scratch the muzzle of the sleeping dog beside you. You watch a beautiful, brutal film. There is something there, in the muddle, out in the drawn distance. Something out there that is of you. Another year, this is where it finds you. Another year, with the winds on the rise, billowing through your ordinary flesh.