Your body becomes this island. Layered in a deep fog. There may be other inhabitants around you. The slow terror buzz dismantles any way of communicating with them. You can recognise shapes and light. Your body is this loud island, every cell, every pulse like a small army scretching across what’s left of your once beautiful fields. Your legs when not on fire, are made of lead, when not made of lead, they are like an old time game of telephone. Your brain is telling the can on the piece of string to make the legs move, but the piece of string is a burnt out conductor.
All of your senses are overwhelmed. The idea of you, has long slipped into the darkness. like a potato sack being pulled over your head, a potato sack that has sat by the bomb fire too long. Everything smells like it’s on fire. Maybe you’re on fire. Light comes through the burlap. This is your world.
You would be sad. If you could. But there is nothing. The emotions left with the rescue boats a long time ago. Only fear and confusion remain. You cannot speak of this fear, as you cannot remember words. So you stare out the window. There is no more time on the island. But there is routine. Wake up, make the child food, get the child ready for school. Go back to your quiet cave. Look at trees, maybe sleep, maybe have a psychotic episode. Leave the cave, attempt to help child with things you help children with. But you cry, because you can’t remember the words, or the order things should be done in. So you sit in the kitchen and stare, and maybe cry a little. You go back to the cave. Get up make dinner. Eat food that no longer nourishes your body, as your body has forgotten too. The more you eat, the more you shrink. You are wasting away. People are worried. My heart beats so fast, I have become a time machine. I have been on the island for years; the army of sound and confusion have not only conquered but have started this doomed two party system.
Over time, the high speed chases your heart is involved in becomes normal. You spend your time on a race track in a cave. Parts of you return. Those parts tell you something is wrong. But then you forget. But then you can’t breathe. The crowd at the racetrack is taking all of your air. The crowd is screaming. No that’s just the bathroom fan. The bathroom fan is screaming. Why is the bathroom fan screaming?
Parts of you have been erased. But you don’t know that yet.
You’ve spent a lot of your life pretending that everything is ok. You remember how to do that. So you pretend. You don’t want the child to cry.
The island would be lonely, if it wasn’t so loud.