3 days

The man named Thomas who reads his newspaper after a day of saving lives had explained the notions of normal, which you repeated back to me, making overexaggerated gestures to try and mimic his diagrams drawn in puddles of beer.



I imagine a comparitive line graph, red and blue squiggles dancing around each other. Normal is at a lower level for addicts but easier to reattain when the sought-after substance is clutched between two fingers.



My main questions are these: What do you do when you're waiting for the train, and there are exactly 7 minutes until it is due to pull into the station? Do you admire what's in the vending machine? Do you watch the other commuters examine their Metcards, read their newspapers, pace back and forth in their polyester suits? Do you count the number of butts stamped into the bitumen? Doesn't time past so slowly, wind lashing against your face? What do you do, with 3 minutes to go, except draw in your breaths harder and faster, smiling if the timing is perfect?



What do you do when you get home from work? Do you take off your coat, hang it up, take off your shoes, line them up, turn the kettle on - and then what? Sit quietly on your lounge setting and drink your tea, watching the 6pm news? Feel the warmth ebb back through your limbs as you prepare for your evening to be spent indoors, without five minutes of freezing interjected at intervals you determine?



What do you do when you finish your dinner, full to bursting? You recline, digest, then what do you do? What comes between dinner and dessert, that you can't have anymore? That course is missing, and it's the one you're craving the most, regardless as to whether the pit of hunger in your belly is filled to the brim.



What do you do, whilst you talk on the phone, except play with the fire inbetween your fingers, over and over and over? What do you do? Do you pace back and forth, wearing marks into the cream carpet? Do you fold the basket of laundry that's been at the end of your bed for a week, is that what you're supposed to do? Do you sit idly, cross-legged, as numbness sets into your feet?


What am I supposed to do, as I scrape the coffee foam back from the sides my glass, as I stir the ice in my drink with my straw, as I bite my nails as the ball of anxiety in my stomach grows, as I ingest chapter after chapter, as I sit in a crowded room with too many other minds humming, as I sit outside in the sun, as I sit outside in the cold, as I sit outside in the rain? What am I supposed to do?