resting in the fragile, final hour

In bed, I think I have become a stone sunk to the bottom of the river.

Resting is not my treat or my care. It has peeled away a layer of the skin I felt touch through, wind through, sun through.

I lay between my sheets feeling raw, hurt, alone. The flesh lies on the floor until I can get out of bed and pull it back onto my body when I try to re-emerge into the world.

While resting I click my thumbs and rub my eyes. I read stories and count dots on my bed sheets. While resting I can feel the barriers erect between us in hours to stand in our way. Resting is being left behind, staying behind, getting to know behind, bringing behind with me when I'm up. In the so-called rest I see the big wars that are battling out in my life. There's -----, there's ------, ----, m------, -----ion, ----r. I watch them clash on my ceiling as titans and there's no order to their chaos. They don't stop until I pull my eyes away, drift into sleep, or, finally, get up. There are things about resting that are important, which the world generates people like me to create more of, and those things are here in the breakdown of world order. Every form of order will struggle with itself to exist. This moment of my life is that struggle, living through me. In my bed I scramble up into a sitting position with my restless legs, full bladder, and UTI. That's heavy, and heaviness. It's on me and in me. While resting I have full conversations with you in my head but I don't really manage one when you come into the room. While resting I wonder what you're doing, and I wish you were here, and I wish the world would fit in this room. I wish the air would blow a breeze that didn't smell like yesterday, or the day before that too.

I can't wait to stop resting. I rest in that thought. The rest is the same for the rest of the day.

Let's remember, though, that it's important there is always someone on the fringes of society. Someone who has broken away from the general way of things to become an observer, You don't know me but you need my observation to see what you can't when you're in the thick of having no time. I am resting which is really me saying I am watching which is actually me saying I am carrying it for you. The way you are moving through the world for me. So we call it resting but I am at work.

I am working to understand our world. It will be more work to try and present my findings to you. I don't know if you realise I'm doing this when I'm lying in my room alone, a drop out. I don't know if you realise that you need me.

-Kalapani