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Clair de Lune, L. 32
On Ones and Twos and Threes and Fours
You don’t think about the air you are breathing until you do. Chronic insomniac, you. White noise can’t save you now— inhale, exhale. Count the seconds in between. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. Four— Stop it.
Now go.
Fuck, a split second too long.
Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.
Start over.
When was the last time you thought in first person? Lived in first person? I am disembodied. Dismembered. I am both puppet and puppeteer— I am the one who pulls the strings yet I can’t bring myself to do so. Does anyone have a pair of fucking scissors?
It doesn’t have to be this way!
But it does.
I am omniscient, all-knowing of nothing at all.
☆.。.:・°☆.。.:・°☆
I was eleven when I became aware of my lungs for the first time. I used to do this thing where I would set my alarm roughly two hours before I had to wake up for school. I explained to my mom that it was essentially a second sleep— a chance to escape the day before it even began.
If I am being honest with you, I don’t think I fell back asleep once.
When you wake up sans sunrise, you will start to take note of how this is the quietest your world has ever been. The authenticity is refreshing. If you listen closely, you can hear the blood discourse through your veins. Each cell, each platelet, has something to say.
No, you aren’t crazy, and no, you certainly aren’t imagining things.
The discussion is real. They speak of Dostoyevsky and vanilla. Of French presses and Kant. They start off as a whisper subdued— stifled by the Ones and Twos and Trees and Fours and— Stop it. Now go. Wait, wait, wait. God, where was I?
☆.。.:・°☆.。.:・°☆
In the warmer months, when the minutes feel like hours and my body is linen-drenched and desperate, I knead my toes into the Earth and take root. I have planted myself here as brethren of solstice, where sunshine is no longer an afterthought, but a craving. This. This is when I feel most alive: between time changes and fireside chats, with soiled lungs and widened eyes.
I am made up of exactly twenty-one summers, so much so that early signs of crow’s feet have nestled into my skin. This is the season where I am freckle-faced and free, a mosaic of sailor’s knots and fingertips; a mosaic of flings, of French kisses, of tides turning and souls washed anew.
I am made up of exactly twenty-one summers, but I have yet to live one where I don’t feel completely and utterly insatiable.
I find it funny how arbitrarily human it is to count down the days until repose— checking off calendar boxes, planning our hibernations, delaying matters until the season’s end.
This is when I feel most alive, when I am supposed to slow down and let go, yet I feel so… so. It is fascinating, in a way. You wait all year long for the world to press pause— even if just for a fleeting moment— and when it finally does, you become all the more aware of what is to come.
I know there is more to life in the summertime beyond anxieties and breathwork, beyond Ones and Twos and Threes and Fours— and yet, no matter how hard I try to find a distraction in decompression, my stomach rumbles for something beyond sustenance.
After twenty-one summers of expecting the season to be my resolve, I have found that my hunger is only satiated when drowning.
☆.。.:・°☆.。.:・°☆
My childhood home has a pool in the backyard, best experienced somewhere between mid-July and early August when the water is finally warm enough and the sun sets later than warranted.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to you that I spent most of my youth in the deep end, anchoring myself to the floor until my ears rang, my chest heavy from time misspent.
They say there are five stages of grief, but what happens when the stages intertwine?