There is no nightmare like anticipation. I was awake early to answer, but it never rang. Circling, rehearsing idiot, it never rang. A skip in my heart held the sunrise. By lunch, I was starving. Dripped umbrage all over my bowl of macaroni.

I’ve been under the sea before. Colourless, but it’s unseen, and so very unexciting. Waves of popcorn ceiling and the ebbs are incandescent fictions, fake blues, pretend scarlets. LED dreams, slaughtered by the whirl of a fan. Floating, somehow downward, either ear clogged, unsure whether you want your eyes squeezed shut or so wide open those little red branches pop up. Emails, texts, software updates, deadlines. All my terror comes with a beep and a bright prompt. I can always click away. That’s an insulting fear; the dismissable type. Meagre enough that you’re torn between premature surrenders in the win that's too easy to try for, or victories you forget, spirits exhausted, prides on a tighter metric.

There’s a car parked on my street. I think of derelict drives or distressing passengers or firebombs. Something desperately significant in an idle faculty, something exceptional about being stationary. There’s nothing. There’s a soreness in my back, then the television’s on. I throw on a random episode of a show I’ve seen four times over. If I give chaos an avenue wider than an inch, I have issues with digestion.

Surrounded by crickets. An avoidable, unbearable fucking chatter. Like rain you never get to gawk at or be refreshed by. Rain, without thunder, that you just hear on the roof, but it’s too gentle to bother peeling back the curtains to look. Books beside me are future obligations, efforts stacked and impatient. Not stories. Not wonders and thrill. Lighters in a tray are little shames, little pricks that bleed jealousy for more cathartic pasts. Shampoo bottle from last Christmas, an unopened failing in self-respect. In modesty. There’s an old energy drink near me, on the table. It’s sealed shut but I’m sure it’s started to smell. I feel like fumes engulf me, satiated only by the couch and the mattress. Killed utterly in comfort only absolute. Fumes crooked and inclement, foul weather greedily shrouding the spaces I fill. I imagine an unpleasant stink, mundane enough that none bother to address it. No one wants grime under their nails. They want rejuvenation. I’m certain I make people feel old. Like a peddler of forbearance, turning keen tongues to customers of the same dread.

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There’s a man that keeps coming by the house and he is a beggar. I don’t know how he does it with his big grin and his emotive gesturing, constantly mitigating threats to his impression. He dances in endless theatre, unpaid. But you can see the tears in the coat grow and the divots under the eye darken. You can see exasperation and violent need when the chairs start to empty and the doors squeak abandonment. You can see the dancer twitch.

He sells lawn services or something. I never even think if I want my lawn cut or if it’s within the budget, I just see concord and its tiny tribulations stretched out in the palm of his hand, always consecutive, always intruding. Fingers gripping for an ally. That type of friendship demands either performance or honesty, and shaved grass isn’t a sensible tradeoff for either.

There’s a knock at the door. I stay perfectly still.