Liquidification

A creative block - The suffocating tension of wanting to do, create, but not being able to. It makes one feel like they might as well liquify and turn into a pool of water, meaningless and still.

 

Drip,

No, it sounds like tick tick, the drops falling through the filter, wrapping around its nest, springing back together into one form, and sliding from the pipe into the air to pound on the steel bottom of the sink. A cold, but motionless air seeps through the whole room, and I stare blankly at the rows of glasses, cupboard doors spread wide before my face, some with very narrow bottoms and wider at the top, others slim and attractive, with gilded tips. I reach out into the cupboard and take the small, dark blue one, last one of the set, whose members have all already been smashed save for this last one. I won’t bother reaching further for the really nice yellow ones. Pushing the tap back too forcefully, it stops and crushes the knuckles. Pulling away, I drop my hand into the smooth jet of water, so it branches out into separate streams and awkward sprays like on an umbrella. I think I’ll fill it up to the brim.

The last sunrays of the afternoon peak over the corners of the window and onto the marble counter, and a circle of orange shoots out through the neck of the filled glass over my eye and onto my cheek. The water looks foggy after spraying so forcefully into the glass from the jet. My eyes are lost in the gelatinous depths.  They even cross a little, as the tiles of the floor swim bulbously in the water’s magnification. It entices me. I drink some sips, but then just hold it, pulling it away to a distance, my eyes focused on the trembling surface.  What was it that I was supposed to do? How do I start?

I realize I’ve been standing blank, eyes on the window blind, three fingers holding the glass in a weak grip, drops trailing the edge and falling to the ground.

A moment passes, an unimaginably long second. Still nothing. I feel my eyelid tighten up, a bitter tingling in the corner, my face seems to droop down.

I begin at the fingertips, stretch my left hand out. The very tops sweat, and there is a little point on each one, with a cold, prickly light pointing out. My nails turn very rigid and cold. Then I realize, they’re not there anymore. The cold branches out like veins on a leaf surface, icy coolness massaging the soft skin, and reaching into the webs between the fingers. My wrists curl up like heels, and I jolt upright as the glass smashes against the stone tile floor.

 I finally look down. My arms turn gray, and spotted like the marble slab which I try to hold onto. As I try to grasp at it, my arms instead just lay themselves down on the surface, my knees pushing forward as my ankles turn to jelly. I kick my sandals back while I still can, and look excitedly at the fibrous net pulling up my legs, which are white tree trunks, cold, with luminous veins branching up and twirling around.

 I whisk my hair back, I want a better view. The oven turns round as I look at it upside down, through my legs, which magnify everything behind. Two logs of water, thinning skin holding their form upright. Water pours from my head as I’m upside down.  A torrent of stormy waters from behind my hair, bathing it in a lively current.  I look at my arms, the same thing is happening. Standing back upright I realize my face is also turning white. I gasp in awe and anticipation. There’s no mirror, but I can feel it in a way, like a cool relaxing stroke of a wave, bathing in a cold spring sea, pinching it and waking it up. I smile with liquid lips, gasp in astonishment.

I think I’m standing on my knees. Why can’t I even look down? There are diamonds everywhere! Diamonds! Or broken glass. A delicate bowl with rough, thin edges sits under me, looking up. It Is the bottom of the broken glass.

Ice behind me? On my head? I can’t turn around. I cannot hear anything, my sight narrows to a pinpoint, a small grey spot.

 It’s there. I don’t even know how I’m sitting, probably in a funny way, my head against the counter. I can’t fix it, and how do I turn right?

A few moments ago I was still so smart like when I was a child with thousands of hopes filling my mind up every day. Life an open corridor to every direction. Did that happen or has it not happened yet? Yes, the brain actually went first, it always does.  I’ve told the story from the back.

I have so many questions I should sit still. My brain is turning to water. A hypnotic cool grasps at the back, so mesmerizing, a beautiful trance.

 It will fall to the ground like a wailing cry and nestle in the concave remnants of the broken glass. I will not have changed much, just become a pool of water, unmoved and incapable of moving.