As the heart drains, so do words. At 1 AM while I lie horizontal and insomniac, in the background the screensaver lights of my OLED television shine unpredictably, projecting the ceiling lamp into shifting shadows on the wall, constituting the only illusion of movement in this otherwise still room. Earlier in the evening I have drunk coffee, not because I needed it, but because the air I breathed and the water I drank were too soothing, and I wanted to have something more pungent, something akin to a smoke break in winter without me having to actually smoke. I struggle to fall asleep cleanly, but at the same time am not fully rationally awake. Again the quietness of the night tries to remind me of a black backdrop of an imaginative story awaiting its debut, so that the dead plots pieced together from the many pasts are once again malleated into a single stage show. But the March of 2021 is so distant from any real testament to these plots that anything more than just one or two flashbacks becomes hard to obtain. Therefore the backdrop remains largely vacant, with the sole audience member frozen in his seat, amidst a sea of dark.
I remember that many a times during the night, regardless of when it was Bremen, Berlin or the more uptown area of Munich, I had lied in bed surrounded by the same darkness. Then, I always had something in me, be it missing a person, worrying about a future, or simply having an ire for some abstract, yet-known changes. There was a silent drama, a contextual clash of where I came from versus where I wanted to go. But tonight, and in the succession of nights prior, I am perturbed by nothing. I had a penchant for sentimentality, as was reflected in the music I listen to, the words I write, and the many objects I described through these words. I thought that through more varied experiences and more intense feelings, life would somehow become more porous and therefore easier. However, at the end of it I have only found a rebuttal. Not rebuttal in the sense of proving something to be false, but rather in the sense of proving something to be non-ascribable, that metaphors, sad adjectives, long clauses appended to beautiful sentences with multiple conjunctions originate exclusively from me, and bear no relationship with the things they seek to define. I merely borrow them, so that through them emotions can be discharged. The darkness in which I lie alone is devoid of emotional elements; the listing moonlight through the glass window is devoid of emotional elements; all the places, weather, outlines of people, and the literary elevations of them from the past moments are devoid of emotional elements. It is only that I, am not. As I lie half-naked in this green, foldable, polyester bed that I have inherited from the former tenant, nothing have me in them, and conversely, I have nothing in me.
I do not know exactly when the OLED television has turned itself off. I did not hear the electrical clicking sound it makes when it's completely turned off. I feel a bit apprehended and unlock the phone which is on its charger and next to me. I got this small work phone a few months back after some nagging with the IT department. Right now the only lights in this room are coming from the phone. At this hour the lights appear more glaring than they usually are, a bit like the candle lights from an age-old birthday party of mine, flooding everything else into airy little impressions, eerily removed from reach.
After some time the phone goes dark as well. And the sea of dark envelopes me, scribbling the warm regards of the day's end.
