when i woke up today, i knew it was going to be a strange morning. as i got out of bed, i felt the muscles (ligaments? tendons? i don’t exactly know what they were) in my hip pinch against each other. i shifted my legs back and forth in their sockets until my hips cracked and popped. i took a moment to let the pain subside, then i tried to walk. but i couldn’t. not because of my hips, but because my body had given into the air that compressed around me. i tried to shake my head, shake myself out of this unusual reality, and take a step. instead, my foot resisted me. the air cradling my body convinced my foot that it was better not to move against it. it was easier to fall into its embrace than resist.
the rest of my body soon followed suit. everything became complacent and lulled into stillness. but my mind screamed, staring at the rest of the world moving around me and feeling my muscles slowly calcify then decay. i watched the trees outside my window sway gently in the breeze under which a group of friends huddled. they laughed so loudly i could hear them through a closed window two stories up. i saw a little boy skipping through the grass and weaving through the trunks of the trees, and i wondered if i would ever move like that again.
what would i do if i could move again? i guess i would go to an empty room—it wouldn’t matter where, only that it had enough space for me to dance. and i would let my body move exactly as it wanted. it wouldn’t be like when i was in dance class as a little girl when my teacher would show me what to do and i would desperately try to mimick him with my distorted and unnerving movements. no, this time i would find the way i was meant to move, the way that i could move.
i would move and move and move until my body couldn’t support me anymore. and then i would be left lying on the floor, and it wouldn’t matter if i sank then and there to the depths of hell because my body would have danced again. i would have drawn the most beautiful shapes against the floor with my feet, and let my arms flutter exactly as they pleased. my torso would contract and shift in ways it had never known before and through spaces i had never found before.
i don’t know how my hips would have moved, how my legs would act if they left the floor. i wonder what it’s like to have a body that doesn’t feel like an afterthought hacked together with whatever spare parts god could find as he ran out of time to get me down to earth. i think i would’ve appreciated a bit more time from him. maybe a bit more attention, too.
suddenly, i felt my hair swinging against my back. and i stared at myself in the reflection of my window. my eyes blinked. they blinked again. i watched myself through the episodic periods of my opened eyes, and i wished i could move like my eyes moved. without thinking. movement that came from somewhere deep within myself that i couldn’t understand. i wished i didn’t have to understand. i wished i didn’t have to think twice about my every movement. i wished, i wished, i wished.
i wished i could be built again.
no one was home, and i wanted to move the way i had dreamed of moving before the air took me captive moments ago. it was a compulsion that ate me from the inside, so i did as it commanded. it was enough to break through the air. i brushed my arms, cutting at the world around me. i gave myself over to every moment, every inclination. i slid my feet against the floor, and i started to turn. i gave myself away to the endlessness spinning. i spun and spun until i couldn’t see straight anymore, and i felt like i was in heaven. not the heaven i imagined of sitting in the pews of mass listening to the homilies, but something greater and lighter.
then, my foot caught against the carpet, and i fell. i must really have been in heaven because it took me ages before i reached the floor, and my whole body landed with a thud. i lay there breathing heavily, my back lifting and falling, back and forth against the faux wooden floor.
soon, i felt my body convulsing, collapsing in on itself. i heard my ribs grind against each other and crush themselves into a thick powder that i started to choke on. then went my legs. my femurs, my knees, my feet, every metatarsal fought against each other. dented and distorted, the muscles and ligaments twisted around themselves, choking each other like starving pythons.
and there should have been blood, but when i felt around with my fingers, there was nothing. no warm and sticky liquid to drown my body.
i just lay there on the floor, on that dirty carpet i was supposed to have cleaned a few weeks ago. i felt every bit of dust consuming me, crawling all over me, pushing into my body, and i didn’t even think to move. i realized i was done moving. i was done fighting a force that was beyond me. i was never meant to win, so in that moment i didn’t even try. i let myself still and surrender.
i stared down and watched as someone came into the room, but the room was empty, and i was gone.
Alba Mastromatteo is a contributing writer for the Nassau Weekly.