the mechanics of this set of doldrums

I wake up to the sound of my cell phone alarm. It has a resounding peal. It has a clang. I only recognize it in the dark, in my sleep. I have never heard it while I was awake. One time I set my alarm in a bar, while drinking, and before the night ended my phone (whose battery is prone to a shorter span of time than most) died. It died silently in my purse and laid there, forgotten. Even though it was completely dead, the alarm still rang the next morning, dutiful, frightful, loud. I was never more proud and secure, that even when my phone had no life it would still manage to wake me up.

I snooze. Five, ten minutes at the most. I place the phone under my pillow to muffle the noise of its alarm and to feel its vibration when it rings again. Finally, I rise, stretching, straightening, uncoiling myself from the brown sheet she gave me way back in July. I find its corners and match them together, folding it up neatly enough to tuck it away, but not neat enough to impress. Then I pull the fitted sheet off her long sofa, long enough for me, as wide as a twin size bed. The sheet is that color between khaki and beige whose name I don't know. I find it's seams and tuck them inside each other and then push both of the folded pieces to the back of the couch and rest the five large pillows, two on the left, two on the right, one in the middle with karate chops into the top middle of each. Then the medium sized green pillow for accent.

My clothes are laid out from the night before and I dress, pulling off my makeshift version of pajamas. Normally, I don't wear clothes to bed. I prefer to sleep naked. But being naked in someone else's home is a hard thing to do. It feels wrong somehow. I tuck them behind the couch's arm and slap my buckwheat pillow on top of the pile. I place each item on my body as if it is a return to the previous day, as if I had never left them, they instantly cling to my curves and skin.

I grab my purse and head towards the heavy green velvet curtains. They supposedly block the noise of my benefactor and her lover, but I can still hear their murmers at night while lying on her couch. I push the curtains back along the rod into their daytime place, tucked behind scrolling hooks. I like the way the curtains feel in my hands, the way everything in her place feels, heavy, solid, meaningful, as if it would outlast anything and everything.

Some days I avoid the bathroom altogether (ever since the morning when I scared her while she was seated on the toilet, naked, in the dark, and I was just a shadow that loomed larger than her lover's ever had). The door hinges squeak. The knob is testy. She is a light sleeper and can hear me turn the handle unless I do it just right. If I do use the bathroom I make sure to ease myself past the door, close it while turning the knob so that the latch doesn't make a sound and ease the knob back it to its resting place. But no matter how hard I try not to make a sound, the door always squeals and whines.

I walk through the hallway trepidatiously. Anything could be in my way, and often there is something to be snagged on, like the handle of her bicycle, or an ornate piece of furniture. Or I fear tripping and breaking my face on her tiled floor, the tiles she imported from Italy, or was it Spain?

When I get to the door to leave, I open it as carefully as the bathroom door, and it cooperates. Once in the outside hall, I search my purse for her small set of keys and close the door by sticking the key in the lock and turning the latch so that it doesn't clang when I close the door shut.

The hallway is quiet. The elevator is a soft hum. The doorman is asleep or dozing until I turn the handle of the door from the lobby. He tells me good morning and I simply nod. Sometimes I say something in response, but most days I nod. I exit the building in a rush of relief, feeling ten pounds lighter and five years younger.

I go to work, find myself running through the things I have to do and the things I must do with remarkable ease and clarity. Lately I haven't even been drinking coffee. I just show up and my body does the work it knows to do and my head wanders, filled with thoughts of him and his words, glancing at my cell phone which acts as intermediary between he and I. Sometimes a customer comes in that I like to talk to and I will sit in the front with them and pretend I'm not really at work, I'd just been wasting time til they got there. Inevitably, someone always comes in the door and I must return back, behind the counter, lest they spontaneously combust from the shock of no one to serve them immediately.

These days, now that school is back in the spectrum of my life, I tend to have a class in the afternoon, some three days a week. Otherwise, some other form of income. Never nothing. Always something. Often, my evening is also full, whether with more work or an eager friend who has planned my time nearly a week before, or with more mundane things like the pursuit of homework, laundry, etc.

I arrive back at her home between the hours of ten-thirty and eleven p.m., some seventeen hours after my morning departure. It is no wonder she doesn't mind my presence...I have hardly been there. I will think about whether or not I will do something before bed, but it is no surprise when I find the pajamas and turn the couch into my bed. I have become very tired these last few weeks. tired and bored.

Today as I stood on the platform waiting for the red line train, I realized that my body is trapped in the things it must do and my head is constantly running a barrage of contemplations, largely ignoring what the body is up to, okay sure, it manages it and keeps a peripheral eye alert, but my mind is just juiced up all the time.

and very often, it feels like there's no one I can tell these things to, no one who will understand them, no one who will understand the things within the context of the me I am forced to be right now.

It's just that I have been in a state of limbo for so long, hovering between the things I want and the things I must do, and the more I think about it, the more I realize it is probably just a condition of the special makeup of my emotional life, to always be waiting for my real life to kick in and my unenjoyed life to go away. The odd thing is I have never been so close to an actual chasm before me, where I could literally do anything, but before I begin something, I have to get through the next three months. It didn't seem like long until my routine kicked in. It didn't seem like long until his words and presence began to wither and fade. It didn't seem like long until I realized that school wasn't going to be easier just because I walked across that stage in May. It didn't seem like long until the weather suddenly changed, turning brisk and cold, which means my suitcase full of summer clothes is no longer useful, full of clothes that will not keep me warm enough, or covered enough, or suited to face the next season. It's not that I ever expected to be here this long.

At night, I will lie on her couch, my bed, and try to regulate my breathing to lull my brain into sleep. And the five hours that pass in that time between night and day will be fast and hard, and I will remember nothing of them, but feel like I should, feel the deja vu of some lingering dream, or the scraped peanut butter jar of my mind raw and exposed as if it had been doing math calculations all night when I was too busy sleeping to notice.

rinse, repeat.