Tick, Tick, Tick.
The clock's heart beats, slowly, methodically. The sound of my number 2 pencil drumming on glassy, ceramic adds to the cacophony that is my mind.
I stare at the thick stack of papers in front of me, the ticking of my heartbeat getting faster, sounding dissonant against the steady, unfaltering cadence of the clock, my tapping pencil.
I don't like this clock.
It is impatient, rushed.
Like its owner.
Hurrying me.
I don't like this man.
The room is dimly lit except for a glowing crack underneath the heavy wooden door.


***
I can't remember when it started. Before. Or maybe after.
She is a bright child, they said early on.
I was.
I could read and write by the age of three.
Mother was always proud of me.
I was like her, she said.


***
My desk is dark and glassy.
My reflection leers back at me, gaunt.
My skin, which has always been fair, is translucent.
Purple, spidery lines rim my eyes.
My desk is the sea.
Craggy banks, and resolute boulders flicker before my eyes.
Steel gray sea crashes around the sides.

I realize that my no. 2 pencil has splintered in my hands.
Scarlet trails traverse the creases of my palms.

***
We visited every summer.
Mother needed the fresh air,
and the sea.
We swam,
and laughed,
and explored
the cave.
We escaped.
Mother braided my blond hair out of my face.
The sea gently sprayed the boulders.
My braid grew salty and damp.
It whipped my cheeks, turning them rosy.
We walked near the edge.
I was afraid of falling.
And she told me not to worry.
She wouldn't let me slip.


***
Tick, tick, tick.
Why do people fear the dark?
Mother felt at peace in the dark.
She liked the feeling of it crushing around her.
Like me.
We used to build forts in my room, and turn out the lights.
I liked to stare up at the faint outline of the clean, cotton sheet.
My anxious breathing would slow to a gentle rise and fall
of my chest.
I imagined my breath diffusing in the air,
a cloud of Carbon Dioxide,
filling the cave with warm,
humid air,
and the sound of
tranquil breathing.

***
Mother's eyes rarely left there enchanted state.
I soon realized that
Mother was trapped in her own mind.
Her own cave.
Time passed,
and mother couldn't escape.
Her inability to cope
drove her to retreat into the
dark abyss of her mind.
Her blond hair became
matted
with salt.
All of the time.
Her eyes became
gray
pools of liquid glass.
Bottomless.
I reached out for her.
But she slipped,
over the edge of sanity.
I didn't understand.
Neither did the man.


***
Tick, Tick, Tick
Mother was afraid of time
passing,
leaving her.
It was angry at her,
she said.
So Mother hid from it.
In the cave.
Her eyes would take on a dream-like state.
Outside,
she only heard ticking.
It killed her.
He watched her with
pain-filled,
clear blue eyes.
Eyes like mine.
Her eyes became bleak,
and piercing,
for no reason.
They haunted me,
and him.
A frigid breeze entered her soft,
sea-gray eyes.
On these days,
the man whisked me away,
to the movies,
the sea,
the pond.
We laughed,
and swam,
and sang.
We were unafraid.

***
Tick, tick, tick
The man is approaching.
He wants to know if I am finished.
With what?
He is still talking to me.
My chest is tightening,
constricting my breath.

***
A test.
I used to take many of those
in a fluorescent chamber.
A prison.
Ink blot after ink blot.
Question after question.
Tick Tick Tick.
This is when it started.
She had left us.
He didn't want to lose me
like he lost her.

***
Gravity tugs at the skin on my face.
My eyes droop, and my features slacken.
Are my eyes her eyes?
My hair is matted.
Wild.
I want to crawl into a dark oblivion.
I want to be in the cave.
With Mother.
Far from him.
Far from the clock.
The page is hazy.
My nose is an inch from the inky blur.
My paper is damp with
pearly orbs.
My eyes prickle.
My head spins.
My name is black
atop the page.
A test.
I have always been smart,
like mother.
Like mother.
My throat constricts.
It feels
bruised.
My breathing is becoming irregular,
and the dark room is becoming fuzzy.
I don't want to be like her
But I think it is inevitable.

***
Tick, Tick, Tick
The man was different from us.
He feared the cave.
The sea.
The salt.
But he loved mother,
and he loved me.
But there was not room in the cave for a third person.
He tried to pull us out,
is still trying to pull me out.
I know he will not.
I am like her.
He knows this too,
has known for a long time.
He doesn't understand.

***
The man hands me a glass of water and a brightly colored capsule.
I stare at it.
I stare up at him.
Our eyes meet.
Two sets of pale, blue eyes truly meeting for the first time.
Our eyes are kin.
I swallow.
I understand.

***
I am walking near the cave.
Near the sea.
I can feel mother.
She is so close.
So is the man, my father.
I do not understand him.
But I do not understand myself
or mother.
I understand the cave.
Father braids my hair.
I did not know he could do that.
I do not know anything about him.
We play,
we laugh,
we swim.
Mother joins us.
Her hair is not matted.
Her gray eyes are opalescent spheres
vibrating with life,
Reflecting the light of the sea.
We build a fortress on the shore.
Underneath the cave.
My cheeks are salty,
blushing, sanguine.
I am euphoric,
deaf to the clock.
I have slipped.
But father has saved me.