Conversations with my Consciousness

Searching through my inbox for “Bulgaria” to send travel recs to a friend revealed this piece I’d written and emailed to a few friends in March 2014.

It still rings true today, and neither the words nor the night visions have ceased — in fact, they seem to have gotten stronger. The conversation continues.

It is unedited except for added breaks and formatting to make it more legible.

When she had nothing to look at but the world, words tumbled into her brain. It was never quiet. They assembled themselves into prose without her will.

Walking past a laundromat at lunchtime in the winter became an ode to the hot breaths she found respite in from the cold wind. They whispered tales of concrete garden parties during the four short and one long block home from the subway. In the train without a book or a tune, she composed letters, rather, emails or texts.

If she reached for a pen or computer to record the thoughts, they vanished, scared of preservation or embarking outside the safe confines of her mind. They felt safe playing across the black screen just north of her forehead, narrating stories she didn’t know she was writing.

She fell in love with them sometimes, laughing at their jokes or being awed by their phrasing.

Without them, she might not notice all the details, but they never failed to accompany her excursions. They were like eager children with a thousand questions, tumbling out after one another to translate everything she saw and heard and felt into something she could understand.

They knew she needed the words to make sense of things. That any experience rested unsettled at the tip of her tongue until they found their way to one another.

Once she had the words, once she’d assigned it poetry, it silently filed itself away.

Sometimes she’d try to recall the words.

Remember? She’d say, tapping at the metal cabinets of her mind, there was that one day, something about detergent soaked air or the rush of a train in a tunnel. What was that? I want to hear it again. I want to write it. I think someone else might need those words.

But they wouldn’t answer. They were stubborn like that.

Hey! She’d call, I made you! We’re in this together. I was there, I can see the sky was blue and if I saw it in a picture, I might think it was a warm day. But the wind slipped through the threads and the feathers and found itself in my bones, pulling its fingers through me like toes in the sand. It took less than five minutes to compose, from the grocery store through the bridge.

But the words weren’t interested in what had happened. That’s not how we work, they’d say. You only get to keep us if you write it down, right then. You know the rules.

When this happened and they would try to show up later, she’d shoo them away.

Oh no! She’d think. Don’t even get started. I know what you’re going to do. You’ll read me some poetry to make me fall in love again, only I won’t know it later. I won’t see you again. I’m tired of this affair. You’ll just have to come back when I’m ready for you. I’ll catch you next time, I’ll get you in black and white.

Suit yourself, they’d say, and fade away.

For a moment.

Inevitably, new ones would appear, unscolded and unaware. She’d wrinkle her nose. Another unsatisfactory affair, but it’s exhausting to fight them off.

All her life, they were strongest at night.

The boundaries blurred from her mind and the room’s black sky, and they were eager to stretch their legs. I’ve got a lot to do! She’d glance at the clock, green lines glowing next to her bed. I’ve got school tomorrow and I need hours of sleep.

But they didn’t care and there was nothing she could do.

Her parents tortured her awake in the morning with frozen orange juice cans and drips of water and morning songs. They didn’t know about the words.

As she got older, her exhaustion dragged her eyelids down and made the words sleep.

Once, when her heart broke, they kept her up for months and they brought pictures to make her listen.

Finally, she found hypnosis recordings and tricked them into letting her sleep. She listened every night for months, and the words waited. Eventually, she stopped listening, but they’d been well trained and kept quiet at night.

For a while.

Instead, the words let her mind play tricks with the space. The air turned to smoke and woke her up in a haze. She saw things move and change.

The words were quiet, but her dreams leaked out and took over the room.

Let’s redecorate this place! They slipped around and changed the shapes. She’d pull herself awake and catch them at work before demanding reality be restored.

She didn’t have words but she knew the visions were wrong. She couldn’t describe them or explain the story, just grope against the night until the air settled down and the furniture stilled.

One day, the words started coming back to the night. Oh, you missed us.

A little, she thought, but I’m tired too. Aha, they said. Night patrol will resume.

Two can play that game, she thought. If you want to keep me up, I’ll catch you this time. We’ll only make it worse, they taunted. We’ll keep you up all hours. Your wrists will tire. Your eyes will ache.

She didn’t respond. She had her traps set.

Katherine works remotely while she travels the world — on the road since June 2014. If you liked this piece, please give it a ❤
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