Blanket

She handed me a rubber duck and I woke up. I shut my eyes again so tight they ached and I had to open them again. I lie in bed naked and tired staring at the ceiling as everything around me shakes and all other noise is drowned out by the 11:15 a.m. train passing overhead. Then a dog barks.

“To wake is to live,” I tell myself again this morning.

“Screw you,” I reply.

Molecules. It’s all we are. People think of themselves as tiny beings looking out windows while controlling arms and legs and fingers. It’s all in the brain. Our brains tell us blue is blue or square is square. When I touch something, all I know is what my brain is saying it is. My fingers feel nothing; my eyes see nothing, and my ears hear nothing. They all just receive and the brain interprets. It’s no coincidence that our brains happen to agree upon most things. We’re part of a blanket of molecules all connected very loosely by tiny gravitational fields. When a soldier shoots a man he’s just shooting off his own foot.

I sit in front of my window and sip on my coffee. There’s a cloud in the sky- the only one brave enough to show. I try to imagine what it look likes, like my mother told me to do as a child. Then the dog barks. In the apartment next door the man has a bulldog named Loki. He barks to call back his master, his god, but he’s not coming back till midnight and never earlier.

Just because we are all of the same blanket doesn’t mean all of it is necessary.

I have a key to his apartment.

I have had my appendix removed.

The dog is silent.