(NaNoWriMo) Lightly Treading:

THAT crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,
Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling she knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.
No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea.'
-W.B Yeats

Sunlight fought against the closed blinds which covered a second floor bedroom window. Its efforts were not enough to illuminate the space that it sought, but the few strong rays that did erupt through the cracks served well as an indicator that morning had come and gone hours ago. Maeve Bell had spent those hours filing through her mind in tepid search of a compelling reason to pull herself out of bed. There were a number of things which demanded her eventual attention, none of which successfully challenged the oppressive gravity binding her to where she lay. Even the valiant sun only inspired her to bury her head beneath the thick duvet, as anything brighter than total darkness caused painful throbbing in her temples.

 There were three things which played a formidable tug-o-war against Maeve's apathy: hunger, dehydration, and a painful bladder. The discomfort had mounted as the hours passed and, finally, it demanded action. Punishment for being alive, she supposed as she threw off her blankets.

There was a cruel and cynical voice that played out in her head as she dragged her feet across the slate floor tiles. It was her own voice, but the meanest version of it. It berated her with every step, ‘...such a luxurious life that lets you stay in bed and pity yourself until three in the afternoon. Any other person would be forced to grind through the nine-to-five no matter their mood, so what are your pitying yourself for, exactly? Whatever, you’re just spoiled. Stay in bed. It’s too late to get shit done now since we all know you can’t ever do anything in a timely manner anyways.’    

In the bathroom, she addressed two of her pressing needs. Unable to find the cup that was usually perched next to the sink, she drank tap water from her hands. Her reflection in the mirror did nothing to bolster her opinion of herself. What use to be loose curls in her mousy colored hair were now gravity defying mats. She use to assert that her eyes were blue, but in this lighting they were painfully dull and gray. Perhaps they were simply reflecting the exhausted bruising beneath her bottom lids. Or...maybe that was just smudged eyeliner from four days ago.

The thought to shower as well as to brush her hair and teeth passed over her mind almost as quickly as she passed back into her bedroom. She’d do it later. She’d eat later, too. She’d do it just as soon as she had enough energy. She laid back down into her bed and waited to feel capable. Her head was too heavy. Her throat was too dry. She was just...too tired.

--

 A drop of panic threw her eyes open, and she sat upright. There was a sound, she swore she heard it, from downstairs. At first she thought nothing of it. Anxiety sunk into her stomach like a stone when she found herself unable to recall locking the front door. She sat up, planting her feet onto the ground, and listened as carefully as she could. There was nothing, not even the sound of birds outside.

 Slowly, quietly, she crept towards her window. Her heartbeat blotted her vision as she teased the blinds apart, just a crack, to peer out into the street. It was dark and only a strip of purple painted the horizon. Had she...fallen asleep? She backed up to glance at the clock next to her bed. The numbers presented on the little LED screen read "5:30" and only contributed to her disorientation. ‘The sun’s already set?’ It took an additional moment of thought for Maeve to realize that the hour was in the a.m and not the p.m.

 A groan escaped through her lips the way her spirit wished it could. Without much thought about it, Maeve shuffled out of her bedroom and down the stairs. The anxiety which jarred her awake was gone, replaced by the usual apathy that swirled in her mind as a thick fog. She checked the front door anyways and sure enough, it was securely locked. At least the terror of her imaginary home invader got her out of bed. ‘Though, to be honest, if someone wanted to break into my house while I slept and then stab me twenty-six times, I wouldn’t be upset about it.’

 In the kitchen she poured herself a bowl of cereal and, upon seeing that the milk had been left on the counter to sour, opted to eat that cereal dry. Clutching the bowl to her chest like a coveted prize, she dragged her meal over to the kitchen’s island, and pulled up a stool in front of her laptop. A tap on the touchpad spurred it’s screen to life and she curled herself over the keyboard. It was so easy to melt away into the timeless and intangible realm of the online world.