Tester

moments; I imagine myself in the
terribly strange state of old age,
and reflect upon the brevity of it
all, and I make myself through this
image: part nostalgia, part surrealist
requiem. Shivering and shaking
in my bed, I try against all intuition
to enjoy my discomfort, because I
might just not have the same kind
of feeling again. And as I lie in the
sweat drenched sheets, I begin to
see the color blue. In between fits
of expelling anything and everything
from my body’s depths, I lie
back, thankful for the brief respite
and thinking, for the briefest moment,
that someone is sitting there
stroking my hand. The color blue
fades to a soft black. My bed is a
boat lodging and dislodging itself
all the time. Its movement carries
me along and I shift back and
forth trying to regain my balance.
Sustained, specters of my
lonely lost friends—and watching
eyes of the brilliant stories, theories,
and thoughts—my books sit
on their shelves, collecting days.
Over the years I’ve read many of
these books. I remember them as
important interlocutors to different
stages of me: from Harry to
Holden to the Hobbitses. Looking
across my cave of a room, I
feel the walls curling around me.
Swaddled and cocooned in the
layers of my bed, I read the titles
of the books. The fondness with
which I remember the characters
makes me question their status as
my real friends. They’re vulnerable
from the start, yet I forget them so
easily. Despite their fleeting concreteness,
or in part due to it, life
takes on the mythos of an endless
play—of characters flying in and
out through the cusp of that interfluvial
dream(life). And when I feel
overwhelmed by the immensity of
all of these fictional worlds, drowning
the moment in near canonical
fashion, I fog my gaze and see the
books as objects. These objects are
alive and I smile as I scan the old
Hebrew books my grandmother
gave me some years ago when I
visited her desert home, situated
right beside the King James Bible
that I stole from a hotel room.
When did you last water your
plants? Did you forget to water
them? They only need to be watered
once a week and they’re
probably going into some hibernating
shock with wind and rain
sounds pounding their neighboring
windows. So I think it’s ok…
You like to keep plants hanging
around your room. Pieces of wood
and bark you’ve hung on the walls
have moss growing on them, and
the air feels thicker. It’s a kind of
tasty. The moss, and the orchids and
bromeliads, they drink the air and
are astounding. Plants are growing
on other plants and they frame
water droplets all of the time. The
plants are painting you and mak-
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