Dehydration

Day 1, 115

Sharp pins press into your skin. They spike up your hairs as if you are cold, but you're not. With nearly a triple digit degree out, you cannot seem to acclimate your body from what is inside you. What is that, exactly? Every breeze, every change you feel greatly in the emptiness in your stomach. It is so empty you realize you almost forgot to fill it, but fill it with what? You are in no mood to bring together the ingredients that once you swore by to swoon an audience. The endless flattering chatter they posed of your ability in such arts, but that was then. The only audience now stands a head taller and a bottle drunker, big blue-eyed and narrow-minded, once a beau yet now a foe. Perhaps the one, standing two heads shorter instead, will rebirth the gratitude that once helped you flourish in your own home. Once, indeed, but looking around you now, your hope disintegrates into disappointment: wishful thinking. The chest, strong with everlasting memories, simply sinks into a floor of regret and dismay you feel the gravitational pull of as well. The bed, of upmost cradling comfort, lays on a fragmented, menacing foundation, eager to pursue its whole destruction of just the parts left of you. Stripped of what you once considered home, is it still there? Does it still exist? No longer does it feel to be a place, nor a person, nor a thing. Did it ever exist?

The wind you feel inside only blows deeper to remind you of its emptiness. A cry for help which you, nonetheless, ignore for the mindless recognition of your little one's routine. You move, but it is controlled by the pins, for your dominance drifted to the sky at just one head above yours. You pick up the ingredients, but do not create art. You have no canvas, no brush, no paint, no water, no passion. Instead, you drop the commoditized items onto a plate. From Picasso you became simple and unadorned. Soul-less, motivation leaves through the front door and inspiration dives into the canal out back. Suddenly, the wind growls faster inside you. Just as you are about to come to consciousness, the growls are masked by the outcry of famine by your little one. No, famine it is not, but what more have you to put your attention to if not this? Perhaps the growling wind, but you already chose to forget about that. The heat swells what you have put forth but you do not feel its supposed effect on your skin. Still, you feel the cold pins that never seem to fall off, disassociate themselves. You carry on routine and do as Wednesday, as Tuesday, as Monday, and all days that came before. With the famine of your little one being defeated by your reprehensible concoction, you nip away at the defeat to feed the wind crying inside of you.

Standing, not as tall as you used to, the wind calms inside you and becomes a gentle breeze once again. Your little one, unappreciative of the forest in her, scurries to her haven of illusion and vision while you are left in the withering desert. Your eyes look down to the sound of ice on glass. Your pins press sharper to the sound of the liquid breaking against the ice. Day just at break and mind already put to waste. At one head taller, or now it feels as two, the words feel further away as if from a distant memory. Or is that just a wish? For memory it is not, it is regrettably present and your pins move your face to present what you should. If not for the pins, you would feel the forest, as does your little one, with just your little one; however, their sharp touch keeps you in place, alive, in the midst of the desert you lost yourself in. The strides passing you by of opposed confidence, you know, mirror the emptiness of the space the wind inside you flurries through. As the wind blows the glass further and further away from you, a sudden relief is what brings the closest thing you have to joy. The relief of not feeling the need to look down when you used to look up into the blue abyss. The relief of not feeling the wind suck away when you used to feel its forced push towards. The puddle that you expected to exist only seems bigger as you turn to examine the spot where the tall one stood. Your repetition in asking only becomes a burden on you as much as it does for the wasted mind; how can blue eyes that do not see be expected to... see? The question loops into a panicked circle in your mind because now you see that you, too, do not see. You follow routine and bend over to clean up the mess left behind, not questioning why and not opening your eyes.