There’s a mirror in the bed with glassy, fragile breasts like ferrofluid sacks. Aye, the wizard sits on high with spells of unrelenting electromagnetism, sending waves of the invisible stuff through the air and into the small puddle of obsidian trapped within each globe.
On each ever-changing surface I’m reflected as I twist and turn under sheets just warm enough to drag my misery along into the aether of half thoughts and the idea that I might need to piss soon.
Each delicate liquid point on the dark spiraling urchin is a needle-nosed reminder of my waning desire to be. It is a a flaccid rod of copper melting — not from heat but from its lack of motivation to stay rigid.
Of course, here I am as always: a boy-shaped man of lard and pasta. A body that undulates like the arm of an anemone in the turbulence of white water. And just imagine what that life would be like were I awake to watch!
Awake to see my own toes curling backward and into the foot just to draw attention away from a tingling leg.
Awake to understand the process in which my pants go from on me, in bed, to on the desk or in the house down the street, half-stuffed down the throat of an already-dead person.
And the moon won’t help, either. It’s the most villainous of all, a gaping scar from its milky brow to the fleshy cheek of its darkening side. It wriggles fingertips of light in through the slats; just enough to be noticed with eyes open, just enough to be remembered with eyes closed.