Way Afterward

Four rehearsals, three concerts, two day drives, a publicity campaign, and six nights later, I'm exhausted. For the first time, I taste the interior of this word, the scraped-out nothing at the core. I've used the whole substance of myself; there's nothing left to give any shape to my skin.

I can't say this is unpleasant. There's something very similar to drunkenness about exhaustion; the same blurring of the edges, the same fixity on the vein moving across the wrist, the fly across the window, the shadow over the skin. I am interested, for the first time, in the saccades of the eye: all the small movements the ocular musculature must make to transform print into words. Why does this work? Why does anything work?

I've been tired before, of course. But It's been a long time since I've worked so hard for something I wanted so hard. It's been a long time since I've let myself want.