The Beginning of September and I'm Sick
Woke with my body staging its small rebellion—every joint a rusty hinge, every muscle a taut wire threatening to snap. My stomach burns with its own private hell, acid eating at the tender walls like guilt consuming good intentions. No hunger. Only this gnawing absence where appetite should live.
I had plans today. Beautiful, simple plans—analog plans. Pages to turn with actual fingers, words to write with actual ink, air to breathe that hadn't been filtered through machines. Instead I sit prisoner before this glowing rectangle, cursor blinking like a mechanical heartbeat, my own pulse keeping time with its empty rhythm.
The fire in my gut spreads upward, a slow creep of nausea that makes everything taste of copper and regret. Even water feels like swallowing glass. My body, that unreliable narrator, tells me stories I don't want to hear—stories of systems failing, of the soft machinery breaking down when I need it most.
Outside, the day unfolds without me. Light moves across the wildflower bushes in its ancient patterns, shadows shorten and lengthen, the swing hangs empty on its chains. I am sealed away from sky, from the particular slant of afternoon sun through oak leaves, from the honest conversation between wind and grass.
The screen hums its electric lullaby, hypnotic and hollow. Hours slip through my fingers like water—noon becomes three becomes five—and I have nothing to show for their passing but tired eyes and the bitter taste of time wasted. This is not living. This is merely existing in the blue glow of elsewhere.
My body aches for movement, for the simple pleasure of walking through air that hasn't been recycled, for the weight of real books in real hands. Instead I feed the machine my attention, watch it devour the daylight I was meant to inhabit. I have energy for nothing else. Today, my body has failed me. Again.
The swing outside moves slightly in the breeze—ghost motion, the memory of all the afternoons I should have claimed. I think of the sky I missed, how it changed from pearl to sapphire to gold without witness, how the birds sang their evening songs to empty air.
Night comes early now, or perhaps I've simply lost the day so completely that darkness feels premature. The fire in my stomach flickers but doesn't die. Tomorrow I will try again—to claim the swing, to taste the sky, to live in my body instead of despite it.
But tonight I am tired in ways that sleep cannot cure, hollow in places that food cannot fill. The screen finally dims. In the sudden darkness, I remember what silence sounds like.