An Experiment of Decay

The time when I am most afraid is just before night falls. The sun is setting, the day has finished, and this inevitable silence begins to prowl throughout the house. Everything seems to change. All begins to take shape of a form that is both unfamiliar and dull, losing any significance it had just a few hours earlier in daylight. I become aware of ever possible sound. The breeze flutters the cotton drapery. The foundation of the walls speaks softly, slowly, of its age. The tread of someone’s footsteps outside. The whistle of smoke mushrooming from the neighbors chimney. It all is incredibly frightening.
Is this it? Have we all been born into a silent world, a world where there exists a hierarchal struggle between the human experience, reality, dreams and truth? Are our souls forever confined within this hostile world where indifference precedes the mercilessness of human nature and thought?
I know I am here. Now. Awake. Asleep. Yet, my sanity still appears to be slowly slipping through the slivered cracks of the floor; the floor I trust will hold me when I choose to awake from this reverie. When I breathe, breathe these thoughts, my body becomes as lifeless as the mound of sheets I so coldly lay upon. This place, this tired place, withers away; like a train, I see it getting smaller as it pulls away. It is here, in my bed, where life’s absence of meaning seems to remove any reason for living.
I believe life to exist. Although, I am unable to prove it does, or does not. This thought that my reality has limitless tangents, in which I dictate the direction and perception of each stream, is solely secluded to my own mind. So why must I abuse such freedom with doubt and uncertainty? It is a human fear. The fear of thought. The fear that passively accepts the mundane actions of life and leaves little room for subconscious contemplation. Perhaps it is this fear that is the key to the essence of existing; existing in a missing world, missing to me and to you.
Everything begins to slow down. My thoughts quiet but remain bellowing inside my body as if it has only this one moment to speak to me. All that is left to do is lay beneath the quilts in this bed and stare out the window into a deep blue sky that has swallowed the sun for another night. Tomorrow seems unimaginable, illusory, a dream that seems to end before it has started. All becomes out of reach where I am no longer burdened with the everyday struggle to be without having to ask. An experience that feels both make-believe and awfully real. Perhaps I have reached a level of true helplessness where even the nightmare of existing, without questions and expectations, becomes increasingly intriguing.
For now I will forget the mysteries of life, my place in this universe, and retreat to a soft slumber. A slumber that takes my frightened hand and guides me to a place where fish walk on land and we all drink tea on tree branches. It is a place that is marvelous and peaceful; a place that feels more real every time I visit.

A Poem: "The Cellar"

The Cellar
By Jenna Reimer

I cannot sleep in this room, dusky and humid,
Cloud like patterns of mildew smears the ceiling,
Cobwebs homed in corners,
Broken and drooped,
Lolling viciously like sultry vines.
Windows bared closed hindering the outside,
Only slivers of light break in
Hunting for the living.
Smells of mold and dampened sheets,
Dusky air all lodged within this bounded room.
I gasp amongst an infected space,
Soaked and weak in gilded sweat.
Nothing could survive long in here;
Even the floor planks are on their last breath.

The I-95

It was only coffee and cartons of cigarettes
that fueled my dad to his next haul.
My childhood memories are muddled,
saturated with visions I choose to remember;
trucking with him is one of them.
Driving deadly back roads
to avoid the weight scales,
the smell of his Copenhagen chew,
dashboard cleaner, the diesel smoke
rising from chrome stacks,
the pine scented air freshener-
these annoyances to others
were only calming to me.
Proudly sitting in the plush red passenger seat
I would outline the small dessert etching
he engraved himself on the window;
a howling coyote, a desolate wasteland,
an eclipsed moon hidden behind murky clouds.
It was those moments I was completely void
of all thoughts of home.
The paved road was the very thing
that silenced that anticipation of the becoming.
The road ahead merges with the semi’s hood;
a blurred vision of concrete and sky
become all to comforting.
I always felt I was one of them, a trucker.
Never putting out or giving in to nothing,
remaining a lonesome soul just to get by.
I longed for the empty diners
where you get a plastic monkey
hanging off the tip of your drink.
Where everyone you meet has baggage,
waiting to unload onto anyone who’ll listen.
Where, during a brief rest break,
you become best friends
with the man sitting beside you,
knowing every detail of his life
down to the final wishes in his will-
this all reminds yourself others exist.
I was too young to ever understand
where we were headed, or why.
All I knew was the I-95 was long,
and you always had to turn back home.