The Heat, the Darkness, the Heat

I have lain in my bed for fourteen days. With pneumonia. I swear to myself that the sloshing around inside my chest cavity that I am convinced that I feel is purely psychosomatic. I look to E., who is sitting on the black leather chair in the corner.

"I know I'm dying," I say. Her gaze does not move from straight ahead, and her eyelids don't flutter from their position, halfway covering her eyes. Between strands of damp hair, I can see her forehead gleaming red.

Later, in the night time, I look out the window and, above the expanse of bricks and windowsills, I catch a glimpse of the sky. From this angle, on my bed, I can just barely make out the dense hazy fog that drenches everything with blackness, and behind it, a faint glow where I imagine the moon is shining strongly. I close my eyes and then I open them again, and then I close them again and keep them sealed shut. I try to imagine that I live somewhere between the top of this great cloud and the bottom, somewhere in which black fog extends around me in every direction, and where no matter how hard I flail and claw at the air, I can never get anywhere.

Early in the next afternoon, E. walks in to the room, the top half of her white skirt sticking in the heat to her thighs. As she hands me a tray, made neatly with small plates, she scratches the back of her neck with her other hand. I pick up a bit of cool rice with two chopsticks from the plate on the lower left, and I try to ignore the pain in my chest as E. crosses her arms and watches me chew it.