These Hazy Days

Rowing

There's an ocean. The waves are misty blue and dark.
They lap at my tiny wooden rowboat.
I feel myself falling into something black and muted.
Is it the night?
Yes, the moon is coming out, a soft white moon,
illuminating the ripples of the water.
There is only me, the night, and the ocean.
I keep rowing alone.
Then the sun rises.

There's a forest.
There are pines in every direction.
The sky is a tangible gray, folding around me,
rippling like the ocean.
It begins to snow quiet flakes.
           They land in my hair.
                                                   They land in my eyes.
The snow keeps falling.
I walk through the trees, my face to the sky.
The pines reach out as I pass, touching my arms.
My legs row like paddles on the ground.
I get nowhere.
I churn until I've widened a gap in the ground.
It's cold, and it shouts dark blue disappointment.

There's a room.
It has four walls but no ceiling. The walls are white.
I sit on a chair, looking around me. I don't see much.
The sky pans above me, clouds whispering.
Time passes. I sit in my chair, unfeeling.
My eyes are a montage camera.
The sky quickens.
A sun bobs up but is soon dowsed by a hard rainfall.
The rain falls into the room.
I watch it hit my skin, but I can't feel it.

It's not my body anymore.

Then there's a mirror across from me.
A white room, a chair, an open ceiling, a mirror.
I look at the man who faces me.
The rain keeps falling and streaks down the glass.
I look at the man but I feel no attachment to him.
He is foreign, he is not present.
He has been rowing for a long time, and it has changed him.
He thinks he is still rowing. He is a shell.

He is a shell, and I feel no attachment to him.