The clock blinks three zero zero
The clock blinks three zero zero in cheap green fluorescents that flash bright and then gone (bright and then gone) against a morning quiet of sleeping bodies outside. She envies them. In dream. And feel the seed of bitter start to take plant all over again.
Her head is racing like a hypochondriac on crack in a broken elevator five levels too high and she is afraid to jump because heights were never her strong point and claustrophobia seems more enticing than the other alternative right now. Coffee. Or sleeping pills. Or both. Just to see if the two would cancel each other out. Coffee is too dangerous and tea would be just tragic. But she keeps on hearing it
tic tic tic
and she doesn’t hear the toc and that’s what worries her.
She pulls the fabric at its seams just to see if it would fray. They call it growing up, when wrinkles precede wisdom and sunspots no longer mark beauty but read a braille of life instead.
(a unique, it gives her character don’t you think?).
Perhaps that’s why she postpones her monthly visits to the dentist and decides to rendezvous with aspirins instead. She wants to keep her wisdom teeth and all its wisdom intact.
Tic tic tic
goes her head. It’s the ticking that keeps these photographs stuck on her wall like that. It’s the ticking that arranges and re-arranges her books in postchronological order in a fit of nervous post-midnight mania. It’s the ticking and that tiny little beetle under her floorboard that tells her time is racing and she suspects he’s been playing with the notches again because it can’t be racing this fast, but then again, she can’t be sure. Some nights she moves in slow motion, but on nights like these, she’s animation stop. It’s all playwright and stage acting and like Irina in Moscow sleep will eventually desensitise her to the ticking in her head. She can’t decide if this is a cure or a concern.
