I heard screaming. My eyes snapped open and I turned around just in time to see a metal door closing. What I thought were voices turned out to be the shrieking of rusted doors on hinges. Then there was a rattling of gears and chains, and in another second, a thud.
The stillness in the air made me think of walls -- four-sided, all-enclosing, air-constricting -- but looking away from the door, finally taking in the surroundings, I find myself outside. Clouds were within my periphery, and below, a vastness of empty space. I was afloat -- my flesh pulsing with veins and skin and organs of gossamer.
A memory flickered to life before me -- like a slideshow or a silent film. I was fourteen, the day after I came out to a childhood friend, the first boy I fell in love with. I'd just woken up, the cobwebs of a distant dream disentangling from my eyes. I was feeling the same thing then as I am feeling now -- the inertia of a body floating in mid-air, free from any push or pull, when nothing and everything is wrong at the same time.
"What am I supposed to feel?" my fourteen-year old self said, to no one in particular. "What am I supposed to feel?" my present self echoed. The clouds never answered, nor did the cobwebs, as clouds and cobwebs are wont to do.
