The Sickness

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For a long time, I slept.

The air around me was comforting and dark. I forgot how sunlight felt, what colors were. I was suspended through space, and all of the stars had been devoured by black holes. I couldn’t see anything because there was nothing. The only thing I recognized was sound. Like raindrops falling onto glass, but magnified, filling me up until I couldn’t think.

I forgot about human constructs—time, and language. I no longer felt my body, as if it were no longer attached to me. Then I forgot my name.

With nothing else to hold onto, I clung to the nothingness. Life was absence, and subtraction. It no longer contained meaning, and I no longer understood the concept of consciousness. I reveled in the darkness. It was me, the dark, and the frosted sound.

And then I woke up.

The process was jarring—far more overwhelming than the first time, writhing through the womb. Infants know no suffering. Everything came back, aching and slow. My body first, bones blooming like flowers out of thin air. Sinews of tissue seeped from the pores, entwining and layering me like a blanket. Flesh grew and flowed like water, and I cried out wordlessly at the joy of it.

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