A sleepless daze of non-information
Article by Anonymous Art by Avy Diamond
I wake up at 5am in the dark. I flick my light on, off, then on again, staggering my vision in winks until my eyes adjust. I crack open my book, read to the end, and watch the soft colors of the sunrise.
Sometimes when I’m alone on my bed I get turned on by the feeling of my body against the covers. My palms stretch over the blankets, and I fight the urge to move. I see how long I can last, just lying there.
We should touch ourselves more often, I think. But this time I will fight it. My body relaxes into the small impression of my mattress and I feel the mild sun on my face, its warm indifference.
Maybe I’ll always exist in this space. Maybe this will be the room I return to in my mind when I need to be alone, with books and papers and earplugs on my nightstand, a splintered wood floor, a Maurice Sendak tapestry of Max in a wolf costume, the sweet yeast odor of my tired body, the languid temperature of my thoughts as they form like dew, my dried lips and fingers; an acute heaviness behind my eyes that takes the shape of my optic nerves; oval vessels coagulated with signals, overworked until slow. A ripple effect of purple eyebags and exhaustion.
To jerk off is to picture nothing but darkness and the curved shape of a body, its slow lurching movements, building and massaging my head, then leaning back as my nerves quicken to extremes until I’m released and in my room again, here with my nightstand, floor, tapestry, and smell.
String some words together in a sinew of banana fruit. Hold them together in their nakedness and unwind them to show they’re ready for eating. Trace a finger over their discarded tissues. Why do you find their dampness lonely? You should be more imaginative in your tracing.
A dust mote falls in silence in the corner of my room, untraceable, untenable. Car reflections drive across my wall in distant lapses. A tiny pebble trickles down oceans of shimmering light.
Discard your phloem bundles; old banana tissues are useless. Once peeled, they cannot hold things together. Find new fruit and store it in the cold so it lasts longer. Put your bananas side by side in a refrigerator box and watch them sleep.
My comforter is papery and keeps me half awake. My neck aches, stiff from weeks of stress.
Time ossifies. A giant pineapple grows in the corner of my room. I kick the wall out of desperation, hoping to wake myself. Then from my bed, I dive head first onto the wooden floor.
Take a banana out and peel. Peel your bananas slowly. You only have so many. Put the open peel on your eyebags. Does that make them feel better? Banana eye boogers mean you slept long. Does it feel that way?
I feel calmer, laid out on this floor. I imagine someone here with me, adding a comfortable pressure to my chest with my shoulder blades firm against the floorboards. I grab my chair’s legs and stand them on my chest.
Write how you feel on the skin.
I hug their legs down, deeper. I want to see their quarter sized marks when I get back from class.
Trace your finger over your banana spots and remember their formations. Store your bananas in the freezer for a while, a month. When you take them out their bruises will be cold and sweet.
Balancing the chair on my chest, I kick my notebook over to my free hand. I open to the middle where a pencil saves my mark between blank pages.
Read and write until you’re so tired that words lose meaning. Then, push through to find new meaning. Drive your tugboat out of the bay. Skim the coast of the red triangle and flirt with its seal colonies. Stop trying so hard. Peel. Try. Draw new letters. Peel. Place them down in your desired formation and stand back to admire your accidental genius. Your letters click like units of truth. How does that feel? They’d make for great floor tiles.
Placing the chair aside, I turn onto my chest and rub my face on the floor, feeling myself blush. I get on all fours and then kneel back to sit back on my heels. The sun warms my mane of hair. From the bottom sights of my window lie snow capped mountains.
Touch yourself with your whole being. Rip off the stalk to delight upon earth's naked fiber. Why are you hesitating? It’s just fiber.
I press my face against yellowing dream periodicals and then press my banana peel inside their pages, preserving its drying fibers among Sonoran desert poppies.
Tuck yourself under the covers and beneath your orange reading lights.
The smell of wind floods my curtains. A knock sounds at my door. A small crack opens and a plate slides through, an outline of white ceramic and food, followed by a pause and a strained click at the threshold. The tap tap tap of rain falls from my gutter. Car tires slosh over shiny asphalt. A fuzzy yellow light blinks at the intersection. Traffic slows. My window curtain flattens in stillness, and a dime-sized circle of sunlight fixates upon my wall. Car engines quiet. Steps recede down my staircase. My bed creaks.