the sound of gulp

I remember lying in the darkness, eyes closed or open, it didn't so much matter. Counting: five days to live through. 24x5. Night hours would supposedly be the easy ones, midnight to seven, one can at least pretend one is sleeping or extremely tired or overslept. But there's only so many times you can use the toilet, and the green carpeted smooth floor would crack, filling the dark. And the light time. Being tired or sick or ill. Eyes closed to make it true and things starting to come out of nothing in your brain-eyes. Houses, doors, windows, flocks of people, ticket booths and soft pillows for the children. Spaceships and bungee-jumping. Always for the children, but you hear no children at all. And at intervals religiously kept it's meal time. Filling time is always welcome, somehow as you chew, the brain tends to hit a pause. And chewing can take such a long time, an extricate process of dealing with objects and negotiating bites. And, whenever possible, the one of three smokes. One per seven hours, give or take. Peaks of the day.