the slip

You wake up in a room that you never remember on the first try, the television spinning some tired story, the sun having slipped away while you slept. There is a fuzz between your thoughts and their thinking, a static between sensation and all the stored away names. You stand up slow, experience at long last kicking in. It was day and now it is night. You think there ought to be a procedure for this. You think I should come prepared.

It is that first gravelly reach, the long dim road behind the eyes. It is that sudden distance between you and your name. All these years spent wandering in the dark, you'd think it would get easier. All these years of burning bridges, you'd think there'd be fire enough to see. You wake and wander just far enough to reclaim the life you never bargained for, then it is the wonder that you would even make the effort. This life you feel you could take or leave.

Maybe it is how the moon slowly disappears, devoured by shadow then returned slice by slice. Maybe it is the way the caterpillar enters the cocoon never to be seen again. You are one thing until you aren't, or you are the same and always changing. Nobody is asking. Nobody needs to know. This life, the next one, all the ones in between-- nobody's taking orders. The days that are squandered, the days that are cherished-- one by one they pass on by. You wake again and again in the life you have, whether or not it is the wrong one. No-one is worrying about the name.