love, read, write

i have, like i imagine many others might, a ritual of undressing at the end of each day. having lived alone for several years i’ve come to appreciate the sanctity of my privacy, the midnight treat after a long evening. as much as i love spending time with people — laughing myself open with them, peering into their lives and egos, bumping shoulders and feeling inspired — my introversion awaits me eagerly each night, quiet and patient for my eventual return to self.

it goes something like this: i enter my apartment after a social evening out. with the click of the apartment door that i close behind me, my cluttered impressions of the day’s events begin to fall slowly into place. as i walk through the musty entryway of my solitude, little moments float downwards from the ceiling like autumn leaves against a breeze – that conversation was quite fruitful, that person was enjoyable and inspiring, that other person i’m starting to think maybe feels uncomfortable with me. the deeper i go into my apartment (and the further from the door, the outside world) the more i curl my senses inwards, dissociating from my physical body which i dispatch into the rote routine of end-of-day: taking off my jacket, laying my keys and wallet onto the counter, throwing my socks in the hamper. my mind attends scrupulously to the emotional collage of the evening, and by the time i am brushing my teeth in my pajamas, the reflection i see in the bathroom mirror is not of myself but of a sculpture of myself. the sculpture is vibrant and opaque and provocative, made of wet foliage, red and yellow and green, inexpressible through language. when i look down, my body remains the same flesh and bone, but it does not feel that way when i walk; i feel my leaves fluttering like scales. this follows me to the end of the evening. i carry it with me into my dreamworld. atop my bed i am clump of leaves, sometimes well-stitched and comforting, other times just a heap waiting to be scattered by a strong gust.

in my last moments of the day i hear the quiet events outside my window. the public bus hisses to a halt, then wheezes itself forward after a pause. the crosswalk chirps “wait” to an midnight pedestrian. cars breeze by with the sound of tires against wet pavement. my eyes close within the cradle of nighttime seattle and the fading echoes of my tireless thoughts.

It's October. Two months away from winter. My skin is already peeling in keen anticipation of the bony tree branches that will adorn my window like a vignette. The draft that will seep in through the cracks and blanket over my face when I sleep. The early darkness, the late mornings.

I've already begun to prepare – a slow retraction from my friends, gradual infrequency of meals, slightly longer naps. Fewer showers. No music. No laughter.

When it feels right, even, I practice arching my back. I know it is too early. Sometimes I get ahead of myself. Some form of muffled excitement gets me antsy in the afternoon and I strip myself naked and stand bent in front of the mirror, inspecting the bony arch of my spine. The little bumps along the curve, like the triangular plates on the back of a dinosaur. I can feel them growing, protruding. Transforming me. The beginnings of a rumble start to bubble somewhere between my pelvis and gut. It feels imminent. I am about to tip over into a roar. I close my eyes and focus on that bubbling, the heat that is stewing within me, vibrating into my knees. I bend forward even more until my hair is touching the ground. The floor might crumble beneath me. I imagine my back snapping itself into the proper arch. I can't wait to dissolve into the shadows of winter.

It is hard to know how much of this desire is detectable to the human eye. People might say that I'm strange, but not much beyond that. Maybe someone will look at me funny at the grocery store if I accidentally slip into my posture while reaching for flour on the bottom shelf. Or if I show up particularly disheveled to a friend's dinner, refuse mimosas, and speak twice in total. Or my staunch refusal of greetings and small talk at work. But generally I like to think that nobody can really tell, and that by the time winter arrives, my existence will quietly exit everyone's memory, leaving just a pinhole for me to re-enter in spring. There are no good-byes given; to them, I have just taken a very long nap.

November is typically when I begin to prepare for my hibernation. This is what my mother taught me. When you get really used to it, honey, she said, it'll even be two weeks. But that comes with experience. Aim for a month. She's right, two weeks seems impossible to me right now. But I'm twenty-six. You'd think I'd at least have gotten it down to three and a half weeks by now.

(i wrote this last year and forgot that i wrote it (it is fiction))