Weak
He who is useful will always be used.
Who did strike out the light?
Laid up with the remnants of fever, I lie here between wake and sleep. I would prefer to enjoy my misery in peace but must instead suffer you presenting me with hot chicken bouillon. You may present me with this hot chicken bouillon, but I shall remain unroused. I shall not be made to move, even as the inside of my mouth wets itself, practically foaming. The hot chicken bouillon is not here, even if it does waft ever more enticingly, I am perfectly still. I shall not be harassed.
I am ten years old and you are my mother. I spy with eyes slit nigh imperceptibly slight: you stand at my foot end and overlook me as I sleep. Noonday clads your face sore white. You must be in tears, your face this wrought and glossed. You look to me like the nice silver, which is never to leave its drawer. My own face is similarly glossed over but with sweat and grease, having been so long bedridden.
Lying here apparently asleep, I fail to see what so upset you. Being ten, I have yet to experience, at least lucidly, any such thing in the reverse. To my mind, which is positvely aboil, I am perhaps even exercising a kind of tact; that is, the art of being silent when there is no more to say.
Nothing moves me. If I lie still, I can forget I am wet all the way through. The sheets press into me, both constricting and comforting me. Verily, I am dry. I am a knight expiring in his suit of armour; it smells, which I accept cannot be helped.
My stomach lies in knots. I am mad with hunger but shall not dream of eating. A ravenous itch may at once surface, but I should sooner die than becalm its cries. In this denial I find a contentment far greater than anything simple sustenance can offer me. And we ought not forget that I am of course asleep, and the sleeper does not eat.
With regret I admit that, being ten, I have yet to pin down exactly how an unconscious person is to move. It must surely be slowly, with abbreviated, heavy movement. Even ignorant, I rehearse these artless twists and turns in my mind. But ever cautious, I dare not risk betraying myself before you by putting them into practice premature, for I am less afraid of being touched and even of being seen than of being put into words; I fear being made into a fool.
When I finally do cool, I shall be new. I must temper myself in order to better endure strain and manage life as it is: with no resolution, no catharsis, and no closure. Things just are, so nothing has to be like anything else. We create opposites for convenience, but there are no sides; they are the same. Without a name I may be happy, then I can be both.
My lord, his throat is cut; that I did for him.
