//creative//
Fall 2017
Generic, 0.5 mg
Madee Ehrenberg
How to reenter a body?
All answers, as far as I can scramble through brain matter, are water. Brew tea, step in lake, splash face. I put some in a glass and washed down a rose quartz tablet, pressed the white plastic button that signals a shower, and thought ha ha what if I fell down? I still think it is funny, too, that I said I was going to sell them. I never thought it was funny when a small, small man encouraged me to abuse.
A body check, too. I mean I tried one, I cocked my head and stretched upward and look! Loose waistband, pelvis, quadricep. Ankle, ankle, woollen sock. An update, my head feels heavy.
1. Do you still like me?
The air was warm and wet in suspension, it felt like waking up alone and drinking coffee. I felt comfortable, for once, sitting outside even though my clothes were spandex. I just sat and sat and sat and looked down, and the light was flat. And every song was loud or made me cry, not because I wanted or had to, but because it reverberated in a new way. It took six hours to write that one page, and I forgot how to subtract five, but it did not so much matter. An update, it is working, keina hura. See how everything is steeped in water, no matter how hard I try.
If you answered “I am not sure” or silence to 1. above, please respond to the following.
2. Do you cherish turning right on red?
3. Do you narrate?
4. Is it strange that I can perfectly recall but not reproduce your intonation of a long “o”?
5. Have you watched one or more episodes of any of the television shows I listed?
6. Do you want to hang out?
7. Can we shuffle on the wood floor?
Finally, an illuminating update, I fell asleep with the lights on and did not breathe through my nose until two and a half hours later, I ate a heaped bowl of lukewarm rigatoni, I misunderstood how another four hours could pass. The radiator shook, I crawled back and forth at the foot of my bed and failed to imagine a world wherein I would not, singly strandwise, pull the hair from my beige carpet with a thumb and three fingers. All these stains predate me.
Did not notice plenty of things last week, like buying two juices and coffee with milk. Like a messenger notification, like a whole day. Like a 60-hour-old wad of cotton (saturated, rank) exactly where you think it was. Like gravity.
I have tried splashing water in my face a handful of times, but I do not remember it ever working. But the rest of it I did tonight, I drank humidity and remained conscious beneath a running spigot. I do not know how these things work. I am grateful, though, can feel my hair, and it is damp enough to put me to sleep.
//Madee Ehrenberg is a senior in Columbia College. She can be reached at [email protected].