Thickening

Drink on the old sofa. Drink the cans until you have no more. And let it die away in you, that drunkenness. And let it come back, the same numbed boredom, empty cans and sweet, stale beer spilled on the carpet.

What time is it? Eleven o’clock. What time, morning or night? Curtains closed against the day. Why is that brightness unbearable? Why is half-light the way to endure the turning of days?

The same, I live in the same. Without memory, it would be bearable. And with memory, that deepens the events of each day, that sinks them still further into themselves?

Sweet, stale beer. The sofa; afternoon TV. Curtains closed. Cat litter on the carpet. Stale gingerbread men from the discount Greggs.

Deep time, doubled time, days thickening as they are lived in series. My bare feet on the nylon carpet. The curtain beginning to fall from the rail: it’s happened before; it will happen again.

Time deepened, instants thickened: this has happened before; this will happen again. Distant pain. But who bore it? Who endured that pain? In truth, I was too tired to bear it. How to coincide with what was not my own? But then, in that house, in the half-light, what was my own?

Time thickened, instants turned outside themselves. Thickened – until each moment was lived in series. I will live it again. It will happen again – but to whom? To me?

Spilt beer, cat litter. The beer spilled. My bare feet on cat litter. Instants, now, that would not pass. They will come again; they will happen again. But for whom?

You were coming, weren’t you? You were arriving, weren’t you, coming as time thickened, avid for the thickening of time. You were coming, blurred one. You saw me.

(And I saw you in the film last night. A Scanner, Darkly. You were wearing a scramble suit. Scrambled, every person at once and no one at all, you were watching me.)

I saw you, watcher. I saw you watching me in me. I saw you, sufferer. I knew what you underwent for me. In the half-light, curtains closed, you were coming. Called by stale beer and cat litter, you were coming.

Scanner, thickening, I knew you by way of what would not leave itself behind. By the instants that returned and were thickened in their returning. Opened now like flowers, into the streaming of time.