A faucet that doesn’t turn off properly. The droplet becoming heavy and full every twenty seconds, falling on the twenty-first. It scrapes the white basin and slides down into the drain. The gray metal covering the hole always wet. I know how it feels to force the handle to turn under my grasp, my palm becoming red and white, colors quickly neutralizing to their normal shades when I let go. I know and I succumbed to, for the time being, the monotonous but arrhythmical fall of the droplet. I am wasting water, maybe. Maybe I am listening for the unexpected in the routine. Someone calls my name and I realize I need to run downstairs. I hadn’t even noticed that I was “upstairs.” My mind hangs on the mouth of a faucet, a droplet heavy and about to fall. I manage to find a flight of stairs. The steps creak with the tempo of my heartbeat and I feel my breath jump and skip in my chest. There’s nobody downstairs. The cold wind makes me shiver. All the windows are open and I feel exposed. I look down and notice my bare legs under a nightgown. The little hairs on my upper arms rise with the chill that enters from the main door and mocks me with a swirl. I am barefoot and the wooden floorboards under my step feel less cold than I imagine.
I notice a pause in my mind and the words press down upon me like a body pinning me down on a bed. I realize how much I miss not feeling their weight. A dance of quickstep, music spilling over the speakers, warm and delicate. I am in the arms of a dashing dancer, his steps light, guiding mine without effort. Everything is so smooth that I can feel a smile take over my face, unforced and radiant.
Sometimes just a breath taken at the right moment of an arpeggio, in the yellow light of a lamp can make me go drunk so quickly that I’ll feel embarrassed by my hunger, my cheeks warming in half of a second.
I return and I am still downstairs. I stopped searching for direction. I don’t really care where the wind comes from (it feels from everywhere), or where the people might have gone, or where east is. I like standing here like this. Ürpertiler içinde.
As much as I prefer the warmth, I want to stay here, wishing I could evaporate, starting from the hair on my arms, and infiltrate the wind so that it has to dance with me. I could become a puddle and leak through the wooden floorboards, coloring them darker with my wetness. I feel my legs move, and I am standing on the threshold of the main door. My toes greet a gust of hasty wind, a bit harsh but my skin doesn’t mind. All I see is gray —clouds, the wind, the ground, the fog. All have merged together and painted the world into a haze of smoke and air. The humidity makes the thinnest layer of water on my lips. I run my tongue over them and taste an unexpected saltiness. I notice little white stripes, thin and filling the gray haze around me. They become less faint and start to glisten as I feel a fullness rupturing the air. A cut that will halve the sky and become one big openness. I feel as light as the fabric that covers my torso. My hair a dandelion that dissipates with the softest of breath and I feel the wooden floor so firm under my feet. I can stand here for days. I wouldn’t even flinch. I am heavy and light. I hear the hum of things pouring in, without a ripping sound. The droplets fall and fall and fall. The haze is still colorless but there is a glimmer to it that comes with water.
I put my hands on the doorframe, I gently push it back and the house leaves me alone under the rain. My feet now welcome the arrhythmical fall of the droplets. My toes can sense the earth becoming mud. It feels so light to be rained on, to be pushed to earth so gently. The freedom in my stillness takes over me and with a warm caress lays me down somewhere unknown and safe.
The haze feels unbound and unlimited. It doesn’t envelop me. I can feel my hair getting heavier. The skin on my face tingles. I lick my lips once again and the salt quenches my thirst. My body knows this is not rain. It is a sea I cannot swim in. The droplets trickle down my thighs. I’ll take it.