A bed in a room with a body on top of it, lying down. The bed, a twin, enough for one; the body lies comfortably on its side, one arm under the head, no pillow; the other arm’s hand in between the body’s thighs, clasped together and pulled up ninety-degrees perpendicular to the torso; not asleep but eyes open, staring ahead into the blank air in the middle of the room. The body is motionless beyond breathing; drawing in deep and long inhales, following them with long, but quicker, exhales. The body—twenty-nine years old, its mind feels older—lies in its childhood bedroom.
The room’s light, residual: projected from the Sun, reflected from the snow in through the window framed in off-white paint, paint looking like pristine white gone old and blotched. The room’s ceiling slants down at forty-five-degrees on the opposite side from the door that hangs on its hinges half-closed and yawning. The body does not stare through the crack of the door, stares instead at that middle nothing, while it lies on the bed, head heavy.
The sheets on the bed are pulled tight while the body lies on top of them like uncompacted snow on top of more snow, lightly. If it were to remove itself, to get up and walk away, it would not leave evidence of its having been there. The top of the bed’s layers, the quilt, is light pink and paint-water blue, floral-looking but not floral; it looks like Spring even in the present Fall, with its premature snow like Winter. The bed stands atop beige carpet stained through use and age—a soda spill by the bed, ordinary foot-traffic by the more-than-half-shut door.
Other things that stand in the room: a dark-brown armoire from the Eighties; a chest-of-drawers, lacquered a mismatched brown, tinted a shade too light; a small television on a cheap cart covered in half-peeled stickers, cart lacking wheels, residing in the corner, television on top and staring outward, looking bored with its face grey like mold and turned off.
The body lies.
Andrew Mangan will be attending Colorado State University in pursuit of his MFA this Fall. In the past, he has interned at ‘The Missouri Review.’