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Have you ever felt everything all at once?

Every breath I inhaled filled my chest, and for some reason it was difficult to breathe back out, like the air from inside me was going through a woodchipper. My legs and feet were perfectly still, and I could feel the space between my toes vibrate and work their way upward. Footage of blood cells coursing through my veins filled my head as I laid down, eyes closed, absorbed in the soft mattress.

My skull became a lantern as I felt a roaring fire behind my cheeks and nose. My thoughts are still going and going and going, but they were quieter now. It’s like my internal monologue had the volume turned down with a remote. My eyes opened and I stared at the ceiling in my dark room, examining the little dots in the air that showed themselves to me. It didn’t feel like home anymore.

Put on an old movie. The film grain was like sand that I wanted to run my fingers through on a beach in the summertime. Not much happened in the film, but I wanted to live inside it. If only they made movies that lasted forever. My head buzzed as I focused intently on tiny things onscreen. Turning my head to see a shirt on the couch, its pattern leapt off of it. For a minute I wished I wasn’t alone, but then the movie ended and I put on an old show I watched as a kid.

I remembered being a kid. I remembered my living room, and the kitchen table I would draw comics at while this episode played on the TV. I realized the amount of time that had passed since then. But that failed to dampen my mood, as the cheesy sitcom I had seen every episode of a thousand times reached out its arms and enfolded me. It felt so warm and cozy.

Nothing else existed physically. I looked and everything was a flat plane. There was no reality in that moment. I turned my head and the image lagged, like a video loading on a computer. The warmth is unbearable and so I open the window just a little bit. Reaching out my hands, my fingertips froze, and suddenly I remembered I have a body. I paused for a moment and felt the reverb in my toes again. Still breathing.

It was time to go to bed, I decided. I watched little shapes paint themselves behind my eyelids. I remembered having fun with some friends, but then they did something they would never do, and as my eyes were at their heaviest I pried them open, realizing I was about to enter a dream. I closed my eyes again and thought about the feeling of waking up with sunlight cascaded upon my skin and how good it would feel. I was already excited for the cup of coffee I was going to make myself in the morning. Wrapping the blankets around my entire body like a cocoon, I breathed slowly into deep sleep.

Rory McBrady’s poem "Neighbors" won first prize in the Eighth Annual School of Visual Arts Writing Program Contest. His poem “Rest” won second prize in the Seventh Annual School of Visual Arts Writing Program Contest. Rory is originally from Cleveland, Ohio. While his main passion is visual art, he is heavily inspired by the surreal, avant-garde underground.