Restless

Some nights, not often, but now at least, my bed is too soft and I can not lie still. I walk through the dark room and snatch my glasses from the dresser, leaving my roomate dreaming and muttering. Forget dreaming. Instead, my bare feet press to cold linoleum, my cotton shirt drapes across my torso, and my middle is contained by the taut waistband of slick basketball shorts. Tight skin covers all of me. I push a stray rope of hair away from my face, open the fridge, drink water, anything but lie still. When my breath is this loud, or rather, the room this soft, my humanness becomes palpable. I am such a restless creature.

God, what will this life be when I'm gone? Will it ever result to more than this pen to paper, a feeble attempt at catching and preserving these slippery fish that churn in my belly? Sometimes I feel the only artists who have caught them are the ones who write about their uncatchable-ness.

God, I can tell that you have made a spirit that becomes restless in a physical body. In the middle of the night, I realize that I am nothing more than a container for something eternal. Life is just a borrowing of bones, to be taken very seriously and very lightly.

I swear I hear music, whispers of piano and strings, inside the whir of the AC unit next to me.