Hollowing

The room falls into itself. Writing falls, and into itself. The monitor is on. What’s it waiting for, the blank page? What aches there, the page on the screen? What focuses itself there, at the heart of the room? What does it seek, the room, by concentrating itself into whiteness?

The monitor; the keyboard. The desk top light, the table. And the window behind them, with the red blind pulled down, nearly down. The black night like a letterbox. What do I see? This room, again, against blackness. This room filled with night.

Am I here? Am I really here? A kind of absence is pushing me aside. It begins in the centre of the room, spreading out: absence, a kind of storm. That says, you are not here. Or, you cannot approach me. As though the room itself were pushing me away.

What begins there, in the middle of the room? What spreads out to fill its corners? There is another room, away, on the other side of the glass. A bedroom – I remember it, I know how to get there. But what do I know?

The room is falling through me, say that. The room is falling through time. What was I writing a year ago? What will I be trying to write a year from now? A year, another year – what is hollowing itself out here? What, in this room, is hollowing itself out?