Hear/Say

I like in-between-moments, like when you’re driving a car, or taking a shower, or even putting on pajamas. When the automatic doors automatically open for you and there is an instant where half of you is in and the other, out.

They are most often the most peaceful non-memories of the day, where nothing really happens, where nothing is expected to happen, and that those mere seconds or minutes may in fact never exist once that they fade away. It is raw but quiet; there are floating thoughts you can’t quite grasp after you snap out of a daydream, or what were you thinking at that red light–?

These moments bend you inward, where a greater universe outside the immediate reach of your senses is incomprehensible. So sunken do you become in the subconscious that you may never know or recollect existing on any  physical plane, because by the time the stillness passes, by the time your mental concentration has dissipated, by the time your inward seeking eye swivels around and blinks once or twice, the rush of facing the future sweeps all consideration into the wind. Is it madness that makes us forget how we once strode down long hallways lined with the silent glares of shiny blue lockers, or the precise first lick of a warm shower? On the other hand, is it madness to be preoccupied by these things? The texture of the seat on your butt through your pants; studying stoplights and the hesitation or coughs of cars abreast to yours. The rush of outside air in, the suck of inside air out. The brace of your body in the awkward pretend-solitude of an elevator without music. Unconscious facial expressions.

I think of these in-between-moments, and I wonder how many I have lost, taken for granted. There must be secrets we wear in the lines of our brow that sag and hang out obvious, unbeknownst to only ourselves when we are too busy seeking answers within.