it always takes a while until i can finally close my eyes.
i’m not sure that the pills work that much on my body.
not anymore. but if i believe that they do, if i strongly make myself believe that they do,
they will, eventually, won’t they ?
it is reckless, this lack of sleep is,
and my book lays on my (never quite made) bed like an abandonned lover, open on page eighty-eight when october comes. i know the end already, the girls kill themselves. the movie had left me clueless, its etheral beauty had left me numb. numb and clueless. so i’ve bought the book. but i’m still guessing, trying to point out something, looking for a word, for the words, and here i am, at page eighty-eight, when october comes.

i roll myself another cigarette, even when the previous one was supposed to be the last. the glue of the thin paper that i lick delicately has a sweet taste, too sweet. i drink some water.
i wanted silence, right ?
i needed silence. but my computer has an incessant metallic noise, that i usually cover up with some music.
for how long hasn’t it been completely silent in my room ?
so silent that i can’t hear myself breath ?
when i’ll turn it off, i will have the same sensation of deep comfort that i have at the end of the days at the shop, when i have my usual headache and that i feel more than i hear, the exact moment when the buzz of the air condition is turned off. suddenly, the shop isn’t a rush of customers hurrying toward the counters anymore, suddenly, the space is wider and more compact at the same time, suddenly, i feel that i can breath again, and that my headache might not be too bad.

the end of the day. i long for it as much as i fear it. the end of my days look all the same. i choose one last song, play it, press the keys that will make my computer shut down after it ends. i choose slow songs, mostly. maybe i still crave for one of the bedtime songs that my mother would sing me, not often, when i couldn’t sleep. she stopped when i was six or so.
i never asked again.

then i start to undress, not even bothering to look for a t-shirt. the metallic noise stops at last. i turn out the lights and roll myself in my blanket.
and this is when, exactly when i begin to think. about anything. about everything. minutes and hours drop silently in the darkness of my room, like water from a tap, and i’m still thinking. about anything. about everything.
i can’t close my eyes entirely until they burn, and i know that it’s not the end. not quite. not yet.

my cigarette is coming to its end. from beyond my eyes, i feel a headache coming, slowly, precisely, like yesterday, like the day before, and like the day before that one, too. always different, always the same. at some random time and various intensity.
a bar of burning iron enters in my skull from my left temple and stops just between my eyes, and my forehead is squeezed, i can imagine the pressure making my brain melt and my head explode, the blood splattering my walls and the picture of my grand-mother.

i’m taking two more pills.
i’m not sure that the pills work that much on my body.
not anymore. but if i believe that they do, if i strongly make myself believe that they do,
they will, eventually, won’t they ?