air

[slimeball supreme]

I choke. It’s the air. It’s on me, in me; stuck to my face, stuck to my arms, in my throat. I can feel the air in my throat. Is it air? Palpable, present. It’s right there. How humid can it get? How hot can it possibly get? Head in hands, breathing now; I can’t. I just can’t.

 

It’s not weather. It’s not the weather. It’s not the weather. It’s not even the air, it’s nothing. I can feel it. Every last breath. It all hurts, grasps at me, rocks in the throat. Gravel in the throat. Why is it like this? Why am I like this? Why does it hurt?

 

I can hear voices. Muffled. Am I dead? I can’t see. I can’t see. It’s out of focus, everything, spinning, constantly spinning, a blur. White. All I see is white. All it is is white. Who is talking? Where am I? Where am I?

 

I plead. I do not know who to. God? Someone? I beckon, plead, someone, someone, please. Please. It hurts. It all hurts, like the very air I’m breathing is soot. Hot. Black. Rough, coarse to the touch. I can touch it. Can I touch it? I can’t touch it. It lessens, in and out, pulls and pushes. I can’t focus. I don’t know. I don’t know. An empty room but everyone stares. Tissue, skin, eyes. Laughing. They all laugh. Who is laughing? Why are they laughing?

 

I don’t know. I swallow. Should I swallow? I shouldn’t swallow. Sharp, stabbing, grit and glass. It burns. It hurts. I shouldn’t swallow. I shouldn’t think. I shouldn’t be. I should not be. What am I? It hurts. It hurts to think. It hurts.

 

Who sees? Does anyone see? Can anyone see? I stumble, fall. Fall on nothing. Nothing? Nothing. I fall on nothing. Maybe I keep falling. Maybe I don’t stop falling. A perpetual fall, an endless fall, a fall through air so thick, so hot, so pointed, it’s like I don't fall at all. Am I falling? I don’t know. I can’t tell. Have I ever been able to tell? What am I doing?

 

Why? Why am I doing this? Why do I allow it to keep happening? Have I allowed it to keep happening? I don’t know. I don’t know. It is filth. I’m in filth. I’m filth? Filth. Clean filth, a room of white. Clean. Filthy. Am I thinking? I don’t know. Did I ever know?

 

The lights darken, they rise. They burn. Sear. Lights? Maybe; bright, white. Staring into a sun, a star. It is eternal, feels like, hours become days, days become minutes. I cannot tell. I cannot comprehend, I should not comprehend. I hang, suspended. What is before me but a waste? A corpse, the carcass of something which once was so much more? What am I but a corpse?

 

The pain begets; it rises and falls, hot and cold. I burn and drown. I cannot think, I cannot dream, I cannot wonder. I regret. I regret events that I do not remember, that I do not know, vague notions of things. Things. I am surrounded by it. Things. Screaming, unwieldy things, things of no description. Words that come and go, words I am not sure of. Are they words?

 

It boils. It beckons. It howls. It protrudes; It I cannot see, It I cannot grasp. It is all encompassing, it is a soup. A muck, a bog. Hot, everpresent. It is what pains me, It is what grabs and tears and kicks and bites, It is what stabs at me. It is my fault.

 

What is, alas, I do not know.