Unplugged

You might have said I was ethereal, under the tent swathed in the night light. I appeared there as a reminder for you every night. A silhouette to tempt you back into the known, in away from the nothingness and no-oneness of the desert. Did it taunt you? I don't think so. Did it hurt me every night to make myself appear captured only by artificial light? Yes it did.

The contrast with you was stark. You could pluck and strum and still make it sound as it was supposed to even if we weren't. I could only moan with the current of machines and the base elements. You had your voice to accompany you. I had my hand reached out in shadow to clasp nothingness, to point at no-one that I recognised any more. To make signs of words that I could no longer breathe, in any air. You were out there, once removed from me, pointing your guitar at the stars, already naming one after me in your shape fuddled mind.

I twirled around under tented nights, hurt-spun by the rigours of my body but let's pretend otherwise. Let's say that you paced the arid land to build up the courage to pull back the curtains and sing me a song of enduring anything else but this. I could throw sand in my face and find a reason not to sing along. I could find an excuse for my rasping. I could pretend you still had the long hair of my youth. Of my life with you. There would be no negative charges, only the electrified noise of us clanging with life. There would be no hum. There would be no nurses. There would be no consent forms. It would just be me and you unplugged in the desert. Instead I am here in a medical biouvac of sterility where even your long hair is a threat. Where your guitar could upset me if too loud, say goodbye to me if too quiet. So, unplug me and do it now before you realise I'm not dancing for you anymore and I cannot breathe alone.