A Memoir

 

The old 'n sturdy drawer, across the room from my bed. The wall of shadow, like a great and wide looming man— when the moonlight was just right (and not enough for my liking), he would stand so straight while the walls and windows shook. So straight and tall, while wind cuts poems out of the creaks of the cheap house and into a crescendo and roar, so guttural and bare, the whistle tucking me in fear. The shadow was always there— watching me wake up, get dressed, and weep; watching me willfully make time out of sleep, keeping memories at bay and fall, over and over again, in a trance with the waves. The way the salt crashes with the coral, coarse air would brush me awake if I weren't already shattered with terror. The undeniable (yet unneeded) reappearance of that grand and gloating monster who, among other things, if I were to switch on this light (dangling above me, the fan's strings), I could remove from this world! Cast into the flood of chaos in the never-fully-determined cloud of photons, swept away in the current. 

Until the river runs dry. Or when the bulb pops. Or the wick burns out. Or when another cumulonimbus, before an exponential innocent pitter-patter on the glass, shades you once again in such a way that I could do naught but whimper alone, with the shadow, in my head.

    But it's really not such a bad deal, anyway. Eventually, the heater hums a warm, familiar wrrrrr. The snore of an old giant, the bigger fish, that keeps the monster crawling among the muck in the gutters of my room, in the corner, hoarding lost pokemon cards, pencils, or legos that I never bothered to save. Once the heater sings its hymns, I realize that I'm no more than a mite that lives in the pores of his head. But you, my friend (my faceless-foe, the shadow)… When the heater hums, it spews its air and surveys the corners of your home. Taking notes, writing choreographed lines; where to get comfy in the fastest possible time. Granted, it takes its time. But it’s time that won't wait to confine each of us with a tranquil breath of metallic and musty air. I'm here. You're there. The heater's heat is everywhere. And sure, it shuts off, but right on time it takes a bite in that fear o' mine. The neater way to tell time.

    I’ve always thought my bed was so big. It takes up the most space in my room...