Turbulence

She has been lying in bed since summer ended. Sufjan Stevens her choice of company. Replaying Fourth of July, she closes her eyes and draws deeper into her covers. She wants to sleep again. Sleep and not be disturbed. That is why her phone is on flight mode. Her friends already know she is not the one to approach during an emergency. She seemingly lives in a hole. Only comes out once in a fortnight to laugh and make merry, then goes back.

Happiness comes in waves,
it will find you again
Words on an orange sticky note. She has these sticky notes, in greens and oranges, stuck to the wall beside her bed. Sometimes she turns her head towards them and traces her finger beneath the words. Sometimes they make sense, like that one about happiness. Sometimes they don’t. Bloom with grace, she wrote with a blue marker. But even she herself knows she’s just wilting. Wilting on the pink bedsheet stained with colour from the markers. She can’t master the strength to bloom.

It’s four in the afternoon. She has not gotten up from the bed. Not even to pee.
I will never be a morning person for the moon and I are too much in love , she justifies. Her curtains are still closed. Testament of how much she detests the day? Is she going to eat? Yesterday she only woke up to bathe, and boil water for a mug of hot chocolate.

Spring is halfway through. The only fruits of the season she has enjoyed are the red blooming roses. She carried one home, and left it to wilt in week-old water in a container of yogurt. Not that she is merciless, or that she doesn’t care for roses. No! She loves roses a lot. Since her boyfriend sent her a poem equating her to a rose, they have been her favourite. She just forgot to replace the water. She will remember with the next flower she gets. The grass is green, she noted the other night as she was going out. Oh well!

When she woke up this morning, she drew the curtains for a second, just to see the rain. Then she tuck her earphones in and John My Beloved floated her away.

Ah Sufjan, where would I be without your music! She discovered him a few months ago, the same time she discovered Call Me by Your Name. She can’t say who made her cry more, Oliver and Elio or Sufjan Stevens and his soft lulling voice. So Visions of Gideon was her first love, and her addiction since. He became her healer for heartbreaks, her running companion, her vodka and her lullaby.

She cannot dance to save her life. She never could. But yesterday, she had Sufjan caressing the room and she moved. Moved like she knew the next chord he would strike on his guitar. She was smiling, her eyes were closed, the windows and curtains closed. And she danced. Free Man in Paris was her choice. She didn’t fool herself into thinking she was good at it. But Sufjan makes it easy. He knows she will need the chaotic chords of his guitar moving like her body. She will need his soft voice playing her into thinking she’s floating on air.

It will be five pm soon. She can smell the sweat on herself, but she cannot master the energy to go and bathe. So she turns to the wall again, and this time a red marker had scribbled you have galaxies inside you. Maybe tomorrow, she whispers, and closes her eyes as Sufjan croons to be alone with you. It is raining outside, but she cannot hear. She hears nothing, only Sufjan Stevens. In seconds, she’s under.

And the moon said to me
-my darling, you do not have to be whole in order to shine