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stranded

Entry I

I am stranded, now, at sea—no sea of water (for I am and have always been so thoroughly landlocked that I have never seen the ocean). I am stranded in a sea of verdant green. I look out the greasy, nicotine-stained blinds and am overwhelmed by the flat expanse that imposes upon my vision from the first floor of my dim, hollowed house. The corn stalks, to me, seem like tall watchers standing upright and rigid, like soldiers in formation—I want to tell them to march away, to quit their watch, but I know I cannot.

I have just risen from my death-sleep in my cold room. Cold, although it’s summer. I am always frigid, now, and from time-to-time pretend I am a warm thing by submerging myself in a hot bath. My bedroom is dark, too, although it is daytime—Grandma’s gaudy quilts hang over the windows, atop the blinds, and smother out the light. The spiders treat my room like a hiding place. To them, this is a place long abandoned, perhaps, for there is so little life in it. I know for sure that to them, I do not count as life.

I have dreamed of food, and of teeth. Again, the dream of my teeth loosening and falling out, the dream of slowly plucking pins out of my feet, has returned. I am hungry and dread moving from my sunken mattress to dress myself and make my way past the thousand ears and towards civilization, but I must eat.