Artyom Sidorkin
A storm lashing against the badly-fitting windows wakes me up. But then I cough, so maybe I was about to wake to cough anyway. During the night the curtain rail has fallen down, yes, I remember that, I woke up when that happened.
I can see the night lit up via various sources: this person has left their (kitchen?) light on, the glow from street lamps, cars’ headlights, the moon of course, but mostly at this particular moment in time the sky is lit up in a tremendous flash of lightning. During this, the tree outside, which I have variously observed turning shades of red and orange, shedding leaves, suspending seed pods from its naked branches, this tree of mine is briefly captured in silhouette against the white slap of lightning, like an X-Ray of a tree. Its branches are bones, and the trunk is bone, and the splinters are bones. Now it is dark again and it is a tree, but I have seen its insides and I won’t pretend otherwise.
I lie against the pillow watching the rain heave against the dirty glass and the rotting windowframes and I remember that man asking “Where are you from?” and how many times I have been asked that in my life, and if I had a superpower it would be to make nobody ask me that ever again.
