There seems to be an uncommon silence just in front of my door. The kind of silence that is full of noise but always empty. I look at my hands and wonder whether or not I have the strength to open the door, whether or not I am willing to open to the door, and more importantly, whether or not I am ready to open the door. And then on the other side, there’s a knocking sound. It’s methodical then rhythmic. It slowly fades after a few hours. I rub my eyes and look down at the bottom of the door. There are lights pouring out from underneath the small opening. They reach into my room and paint the floor in vivid sea-blues and dark earth-greens; sunset-pinks and dawn-purples. The colors are on ecstasy, dancing like mad-men on silhouetted faces -- too sad to show themselves, a brooding that digs into your skin and leaves you contemplating the vastness of a supernova and the deafening silence of screaming in space, barely touching Saturn’s atmosphere, wishing that home wasn’t so close and that people weren’t so much closer.
I tempted the lack of time and smiled to myself; a reflection of my childhood up against the door, moving in ways that would make a whore envious. The pictures kissed the wood, and there I was: running, and laughing, and the dusty orange-yellows refreshed life itself. I placed a finger up to my lower lip and coated its pink skin with nostalgia, pushing it from side to side, my dirty fingertip swaying back and forth then slowly falling back to my leg. It’s hard to imagine that those who have become unimaginable can still live somewhere between your heart and your mind, carefully shaking the in-the-middle, becoming the vanishing point of all things -- the wish, the dream, the breath, the scream.
I watched the door quietly and placed a palm up against it. And the moment my parting skin met with its form, a voice whispered to me, “Come, come. There are un-worlds to un-visit and un-travels to un-go; un-kisses to un-give, un-loves to un-share, un-people to un-meet.” Okay, I’ll go. But only this once. “How un-unlovely.” I caress the door slowly until my laborious hand reaches the door-knob; I grab onto it and my feet lift off of the ground. The rest of the room sinks into the floor and all that I am left to look at is a perpetual darkness, a door, and a dirty door-knob. C’est la vie.
This darkness doesn’t even look or feel or taste like darkness. It seems to look like nothingness. Feel like nothingness. Taste like nothingness. Perhaps I am the first one to know what nothingness tastes like.
