Asylums (Cisco)

For a long time, it seems like I’m talking to myself. He does not say anything back, but finally he just pulls me even closer and nuzzles against the back of my neck. He’s jealous, I can feel it in the air. But there’s not much I can do about it. Right now, I have to take my long drive across that bridge. We climb down, and I take him back to the club.

Crossing the Bay Bridge, as the horizon changes from shades of grays and blues to a mélange of reds and yellows, is a melancholy undertaking. Across the bay, the fog lies still, a heavy burden on the bridge’s sagging middle. I have tried to see the beauty of dawn; tried to appreciate the rising sun. But I’ve come to realize that the clarity of the day is an illusion. We just don’t have vision enough to truly see. As such, I don’t want to exist in the now. Nor do I want to live in the light. And most of all, I do not want the daily routine of routines. I don’t have strength enough to hold myself up, much less someone else. At times like this, I feel like a relic, the missing digit, a lost translation. At least, the voices that had started to stir earlier, have started to fade again, and I can drive without internal chatter. But, even though I’m freed from their hold, the day holds nothing much for me look forward to. And at times like this, just before the dawn breaks, when I know that I need to start the trek across the Bay Bridge, and at other times when Sergio’s body warms mine, and still at other times when the thoughts of Azra’s loneliness break through even the most insistent of voices, I search for that part of myself I hide in the mirror. But it’s a will-o-the-wisp. It’s a puff of smoke. It’s a tangible, but ungraspable object, and even the weight of the search cannot let my mirror self break through. At times like this, just before the dawn breaks, I need something more powerful than my mirror self.