The alarm never rang.
As everything whirled into focus, the sun emerged from its home that God said was Night. They always asked her why she thought Night was the sun’s home. And her answer was always that home was where one came from. She came from the sea: lukewarm and freezing, salty and dirty, but beautiful; blue-green, sparkling with oily clearness… progressive, and rich with poor possessions. The sea was her home and the sea was her architect.
She remembered stormy afternoons when she hid under the bed and listened to violence. She also remembered that it sounded processed and distinctive- the way candy never tastes real, but tastes exactly like candy. It lingered on for days, clinging to the sheets and curtains, the table clothes and kitchen mops, the carpets and towels. It stained the walls and broke the furniture, let glass loose on the floor and made the children and the dogs afraid: fearful but thoughtful, and hopefully scarred. Scars that served to remind family of mistakes unmade and to prepare them for the harsh reality of contrived love; or wrenched love, in her case.
Presently, reminiscence was exhausting her. She began to turn rigid once more: a dry fish wanting water. Sleep crept over her again, jerking her away from consciousness. Her dreams hurt. She saw him again, and she also saw He, or It or Nothing. And a water snake- insipid and abhorrent, the way some things always are. She heard herself scream as it moved towards He, or It, or Nothing. She saw the convulsions, the fleeting bursts of pain. She saw the place where it all began becoming warped, the perversion in the beauty of it all. If He, or It or Nothing had retained vivacity, she might have swum in shallow waters and been oblivious to the repulsiveness of it. But the depths of the ocean were not to let that be- they were obliged to provide a diversity of emotion.
And here she was. Almost dead, and emotionless. An inconsistency that existence was unsure of allowing- aware of the duplicity in taking what was given, and uncertain of how to replace the irreplaceable. The snake wrapped itself around her slender legs. She had been devastated and fulfilled, but this was just a dream, soon to dissipate into a miasma of glitter.
She’d always considered the matter of thought to be glitter- shiny mirrors of reality- so minuscule, that even the most accurate depictions of truth are utterly distorted into a glamorous haze; where childbirth is morbid. The snake continued to coil around her and there was a sharp pain in her drooping bosom which fell even further as her bones collapsed. And then, she was devastated again; but that was reality, not glitter.
She awoke once more. The Sun was high in the sky, brightening its home like hers never could. A dazzling lamp, born into water. She opened her eyes slowly and begged for the Sun to go back home, disappear into the Night. The Night is alluring, like most homes are- full of love and passion, and the occasional danger of becoming too familiar. The day is too banal; the Sun has a way of highlighting all that is tedious. It was good in a way, that He or It or Nothing was not: because He or It or Nothing was not anticipated. But she had delved deeper than anyone else could- and as she came asunder with the glitter of rational enlightenment, something important became apparent: He or It or Nothing was good. But had ceased to be, and her thoughts were now redundant. The light was slowly becoming bearable.
As she lay there, awake and asleep, more thoughts began to surround her. He was his executor. It’s assassin. Nothing’s un-doer. Her rapist and an unforgivable Father. Almost? Or forever? She was now indifferent to being torn apart- by both of them. The sea had taught her to ride the waves instead of crashing into them. But waves of glitter aren’t quite as easy to trick, and it was prophesized that her compulsory submission would drain her.
Her eyes finally opened wide enough to see the clouds pass by her window. Transient, like everything that is tangible- even the diamonds in the dust. She wondered if He, or It, or Nothing; was a diamond in the dust. Buried away, perhaps to bring maturity. Or maybe He, or It, or Nothing was a blood diamond- destined to beget wreckage and distrust. Or, just a diamond: to fuel a life otherwise insolvent. She could not tell pain from anger, and anger from exhaustion.
Right now, she was fish dust. Sandy, like a dried out ocean… sandy and infinite. And infinitesimal, like each grain of the arid expanse. Losing her gorgeous, dirty, brown to a pale and jaundiced skin. Fading from the vast blue into scant and sparse oases. She was sick, but not dead. She was a live stencil to the child who had just died, quietly:
Like the alarm that never rang.
