Lying Down Anyhow

Extract:

We sip from glasses of orange juice and half-pint lagers on a cool afternoon in autumn, a gentle rise and fall of conversation, and I nudge off my shoes to lie upon the cushioned window seat. From behind the bar, the landlord hurls himself toward me, his face as livid as the velvet beneath me. “Get up, get up, get out. This is a respectable establishment.”

—

When I lie down, it is clean mountain air, cool water in blistering summer, soft rains of release. Sit up, and I am fragile as ice, a light breeze might shatter me. Sitting up, I am beyond my body; lying down, cradled by gravity, I creep back in to occupy my self.

In the privacy of home, I move from bed to sofa, sofa to floor, pillow, rugs, and hardwood boards. I lie down wherever I happen to be, with the ease of 20 years’ practice, freely.

But in the world outside, I am censored. I seek out-of-the-way spaces: corridors and empty classrooms, fields and first aid rooms and once, even, a graveyard. I wait to be alone, tuck myself from sight and then, only then, as though it is a thing of shame, I recline…

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