Schizophrenia During Cold Season

Dear winter cold season:

You surprised me when you entered my home and decided to rest near my nose, throat and puffy eyes. Today, I see you’ve now found another cozy nook in my upper chest, making things a bit more stuffy. There seems to be no room to breathe. I’m frozen. A two-month stay for you is long enough. Time to leave now. Thank you.

Dear disorganized brain:

You should be more understanding when I’m dealing with fevers and congestion. There’s simply no room for both of you today. Please take a back seat today.

Thank you, kindly.

You know when your eyes fluttered wide mid-slumber? Just when your spine, which seemed clearly in resting position, lifted itself forward with strange speed, hovering like a spirit, electromagnetically suspended above your bed, which makes you wonder if you’re still sleeping.

And like an exorcist moment, my head rotated, almost a full spin. Gazing to my left, I saw a sharply framed mirror capture a strange shape of human movement which I thought was me.

My arm, without my knowledge, was now bending my elbow upward where the tip of my branching spindly fingers held these red knobby knuckles that began rubbing my tired eyes.

I noticed my face in a blurry reflection in the mirror of a square mahogany frame.

I directed my attention to a rise of swelling pressure under my left upper cheek, feeling congested, where an oval lid held my vision. I reflexively moved my hand underneath the bulging flesh. My thumb and index finger started to pull at the sagging, twitching, ivory lumpy skin. Above that, a folded layer of pinkish gel lined with wet black whiskers blinked, crashing down to meet a bottom set of lashes at incredible speed, squinting the sides, meeting at both ends, shaping a crescent pocket where a emerald green, glassy marble seeing ball was lodged. Moving, rolling side to side in this somewhat peculiarly shaped, slippery slimy socket.

I realized I was curb side-walking on crackled red bolts of lightning in the green of my socket, crossing over and around this cloverleaf quasar that, well, my right Hubble lens captured. With the naked right eye, I squinted, squeezing shut the dull ache inside somewhere.

And then, like a galactic, spastic, elastic, lightly browned Rubber band, I was snapped back for a few moments by the confronting mirror, where I saw with my own eyes — those binary pupil quasars — rear-viewing my peripheral attention back to the black space near my window by the corner mirror that paralleled my other universe. I think I was inside my tiny bedroom.

Following this journey on Rivky G’s site.