Ophelia on the Parapet | spotlight effect
I see the flower and I am not melancholy. I see my shadow but I am not afraid.
There are nights where I feel very calm, like this night. My heart is very faint against my chest, and the room is so silent that my thoughts creep out from beneath my eyes and between my lips and out into the stillness and stretch and yawn. Rap-tap-tap goes the window. Click-click goes the keys.
On nights like these, the slightest movements and the faintest sounds are amplified. How it swags very gently, the half-dried rose dangling from my lamp. Spinning a little on its strings, lilting her head about in a tumult of insomnia. I turn round and catch the dull reflection of a figure against the window: he sees me for a moment, my eyes meet where his eyes would be. We breathe. Woosh woosh goes the wind — it must’ve unlocked the window.
On nights like these, it is so difficult to feel anything. I see much, but the sights no longer rouse any extremity of emotions I would otherwise feel. I see the flower and I am not melancholy. I see my shadow but I am not afraid. I hear the wind which flutters amongst the posters and pages, but I am not cold. No indeed. Almost as if the heart which produces such things are broken the way an old grandfather clock would, with the pendulum hanging dead still, but the gears inside still ticking.
Please give me something. Give me something I can clasp. O — are you feeling this, or is it just the way the dust keeps falling? Woosh goes my lungs. In and out and in and out.
The flower stops moving for a moment. She leaps across the stage, dress ruffled as a bird’s plumage in a strong current or under a vigorous downpour. She promptly collapsed on my table, scattering a few dried petals outward and onto the floor. The bud still looked young. If I looked closer, I might’ve seen a little dewdrop slide down the wood. Down down down. The window snaps shut. The night is gone.
