Flip Flop
Can you see them? The ghosts of my life, slipping in and out the window, ruffling the curtains, disturbing my soul. Everyday they come and go. Gradually diminishing: them and me.
They come and go and they don’t ask, they don’t have to, they are free of normal restraints, physical and otherwise. They come in, fly around the room disturbing the dust on the lamp shade: they even settle on the edge of my bed and watch me as I lie here slowly drifting away, disappearing like the mist in the early morning sun.They’re so rude. You wouldn’t believe it! All the time they’re in and out they chat amongst themselves in their quiet sobbing voices, laughing as they back flip off the window ledge. Whispering among themselves. Even when they’re on my bed talking I can’t quite make out what they’re saying. Sometimes, when I’m drifting between sleeping and waking, I can hear whole words, sentences even, I’ve even seen pictures of what they’re talking about. But when I start really listening it all blurs and fades, a sort of distant murmuring from another time or place, somewhere always on the edge of being, but never quite solid enough to grasp.
I used to think that they were doing it for my benefit, talking quiet, because of my condition but now I think it’s because they used to be a part of me. Now they’ve slipped away they’re afraid that I may try to drag them back into this decrepit body of mine. Like I would hold them prisoner or something. Like I ever wanted them back in me. I’ve been lying here for so long I can’t remember and sometimes I can’t even remember what it is that makes me lie here at all. It’s just some kind of blurry thing the doctor showed me on the X-ray. They said it was cancer: when they first showed me I thought it was cancer too but ever since I noticed those little devils slipping in and out the window, I knew what it was. It was them, all bundled up inside my chest, sleeping and dreaming, waiting to get out, to be free of me. To be free of my world. And how they love it now. Free, healthy, alive in their own funny way.
I used to think they were angels but angels have wings and these things fly by other means. I used to think they were angels coming to take me up to heaven and free me from this suffering. But they just fly around, in and out the window, and talk among themselves.
Once, when I still had some strength and will power, I tried to grab one of them. My hand went right through it. And it was cold, cold as my dead body. It didn’t move, didn’t seem bothered just looked me in the eye and smiled, then flip-flopped across the room and out the window. I thought I heard it laughing. Since then I’ve never cared to try again. It was something else that I lost. Just recently there seems to have been more of them. I don’t know where they’re coming from. It could be from me or it could be that more of them are coming back to visit me. Why would that be? They certainly don’t want to dream inside me again.
I woke up the other afternoon to find them all crowded round my bed, looking down at me, looking kinda sorry. For a half second we all looked at each other then the murmuring started up again and they all shot out the window only to reappear in ones and twos a few moments later, up to their tricks as usual. I couldn’t tell if they’d been looking sorry for me and the state I’m in, or because I’d been able to wake at all. I’ve never seen so many of them and it left me feeling deep down uneasy.
Told my nurse about them the other day, about how they murmur and dive in and out the window. She looked at me like I was mad, coughed politely and asked if I wanted the window shutting. I said no but she shut it anyway. I didn’t see my little flip-flop friends 'til the window opened again. It seems to be getting darker these days, that big old wall across the alley seems to be drinking in all the light and at times I can hardly see even the window. Sometimes I can’t even see my little friends. But I can feel them. In the dark it’s easier to know where they are and what they're doing, but I still can’t hear them clearly. Except, except I thought I did hear one of them say something. What was it now? I know, it said something about time and how it stretches. What a strange thing to say!
Oh, it’s morning again. Least I think it is. I’ve been hearing more and more of what these strange creatures say. They talk about time mostly, as if it were something that was physical, that you could change by heating it up or bending it. I've listened to them a lot and sometimes wish I wasn’t able to any more. I just get so confused. I wonder if they know I’m listening. Now I can hear them all the time and it’s like being a room of normal people babbling on about things I don’t want to hear. They keep saying things like, “We all be gone soon” and “I’ll miss the window.” They give me the creeps. Why are they going and where? To tell you the truth though, I’d like to go with them, anything has got to be better than lying here in this bed drifting in and out and in and out. Trapped in a dark, lifeless room sleeping and waiting, sleeping and waiting; sleeping and waiting.