“Sounds and emotions cross borders to materialize as their own territories.”
Erwann Gauthier is oscillating between being a compulsive colourist, poet, painter, and is passionate about music. He’s a Breton artist living and working in Paris. www.erwanngauthier.com www.ezz-thetic.net
Insomnia at 4:! I am Fiction by VRZ CW: Mental Health & Disturbing Content (Disturbing Imagery)
I can feel his heartbeat through the threadbare, dark blue polyester sheet stretched across his old coil mattress that we play house upon in university. The rhythmic pulses keep me up at night as they skitter across the space between us, searching for something to consume. Each one dives into my chest and reverberates through me. I spend hours wishing the pulsing would stop but desperately hoping it won’t. I would not recover from waking to him dead beside me. My teeth chatter.
I wonder why my heartbeat isn’t as boisterous as his. Maybe mine is trying to concentrate on merging with his, as though it’s learning a new dance routine. I like to dance. 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1… though maybe it’s more sinister than that. What if his heartbeat overpowers mine and forces it into a new rhythm determined by his? I won’t know how to live without him keeping me alive. He sleeps peacefully, unaware of the predator in his pulse. I lie in stillness trying to feel my heartbeat bounce back at me through the coils but it has escaped to a dark corner in the cavern of my ribcage and is evading capture to keep us alive. I thought I was stronger than this.
I stare at the pulsing of his jugular as it pushes against his thin pale skin. It suddenly slips free, grabbing at the sheet as it pulls itself across the bed, each beat creating a pulsing ripple that grows and forms unending waves across the surface of the mattress. My face is wet. My body smacked all over by the force of the beats. My blood moves like a tsunami through my body, across my skin, through my organs and around my bones. I can feel it rising, trapped inside my skin and I get seasick. Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream if you see a crocodile don’t forget to scream.
I sometimes open my mouth wide as though I am screaming and let my body shake as though I am full of rage. Maybe I’m actually gasping for air and trembling with fear, I don’t know. They feel the same. I will sit upon the raft of my skeleton and drift atop the polyester sheet, safe from the pulsing and pulling beneath me until I have it figured out, or just until the morning when the birds drown out the thrumming of his heartbeat. I will pretend that I’m ok as he reaches for an embrace and I feel his fingertips reaching through my ribs and poke at my heart.
VRZkeeps a pad of paper and a pencil on her bedside table to accompany her through the dark on nights split apart by insomnia. Shhhh… Instagram: @inky_squinky