I woke up to the familiar stench of stale, scorching dust particles and my own night sweat. And I was already tired. Next to me rested a permanently sunken-in-the-middle-a-little Hampton pillow supported by an empty shell of sorts directly below, which I reached for habitually; the disappointing results, however, caused me to immediately retract my hand in a flurry of gross and unsolicited feelings. I wonder if he’s awake yet. It felt like I had lunged straight into the center of a public urinal. I might as well have.
        After a long, hearty ceiling stare, I finally got up and began my journey to the kitchen. Every day my reason for it becomes more blurry, but I guess I figure that if I stop feeling sorry for me then the world will stop, too. It’s just very easy to get bogged down when you’re already so far away from getting up.
        Standing by the sink, I rummaged through the silverware rubble in hopes of coming across something actually useful; I found two forks fused together with crusted Frosted Flakes debris. Another meal I probably don’t need anyway. The only thing keeping the bad thoughts away was the outside, so I looked through the small cross-paneled portal directly in front of me. Filling my retina was the image of the most unsightly yard; I myself nearly mistook it for an abandoned bomb shelter. Although unkempt, the front lawn harbored a vast assemblage of life, vivid forms of both stationary and active nature; of deep aquas, fuschias, and Kelly greens; of fluttering six-legged fairies and rustling young leaves escaping gracefully from their parents’ clutches. Somewhere up in the trees I noticed two squirrels. I’m not sure why, really, because they’re pretty understated creatures, but I did in fact catch them together having a seemingly-okay time. One of them was holding a barely-budding flower in its mouth, and the other was on a mission to steal it. They corkscrewed through the tree maze, popping in and out of spaces between leaves and sky until they disappeared into the tree’s fatherly trunk, into each other. And for once I found myself feeling clean, my mind a freshly wiped kitchen counter, an unwrapped eraser, thinking only about not having to think at all for just a moment. I was happy there, just watching them. I was happy that something out there had the freedom to enjoy freedom.