Atlas stirs in his sleep
He stirs in his sleep beside you, and in your wakefulness you pretend to be a professor giving a lecture on his topography. In the half-light he is rendered down to a genre of abstraction, and so you explain him as a silhouette of a giant buried in a shallow grave, or perhaps a pimple on the skin of the earth, perilously close to a cystic eruption.
You do think of him as a giant, in many ways. For one, he seems to have one foot on the past and another on the future. The bulk of him on the sheets is an undeniable landmark of the world’s grievances. His hair is an overgrowth—an unkempt garden—of every species of warfare. Just two weeks ago another lawyer was shot dead in Cebu, he told you yesterday. And some men were refugees for about a hundred feet until they fell off from the plane they were holding on to. You don’t know why he cares so much about these things, or why he seems to want you to care about them as well. He grinds his teeth, mumbles something incoherent, but you don’t bother to lean in and understand. You’re convinced that he speaks multiple languages in his sleep. And it’s true, for in one of his dreams he speaks the jargon of underpaid nurses declaring their resignation.
He stirs, and you wonder why he can’t always be like this: just spread out on the bed, flat and mute and unfenced as a virgin field of study, your area of expertise. You remember that all over his back is an archipelago of dark spots, lessons in bullet form on his body’s geography. From here to here, he lectured you once, is an avenue that used to be the namesake of a dictator’s father. Here is a sculpture of a disembodied arm that memorializes a general who led a rebellion against the Spaniards. This is the coastal road where the body of an unidentified woman was found early one morning; hands zip-tied, mouth gagged, eyes blindfolded, no signs of rape. And here is an island of people who can remember a time when super typhoon and storm surge still didn’t sit well on local tongues.
You survey his neck. It’s barren, you think, so you plant a kiss there. He stirs yet again. The silhouette of his shoulder juts out like a headland, perhaps one that is in danger of collapse, eroded by the relentless ebb and flow of time and history. The dog whimpers on the floor, and you begin to wonder if they’re charting the same nightmares. What are you missing out on? You try to observe him more closely, but in the dark he is more ambiguous than usual, an open ending that is up for your interpretation.
Tomorrow, you promise yourself, as you have promised yourself many times before, you will begin to navigate his deserts, set fire to the greater regions of this mystery: must he carry the weight of the world on his shoulders? Or is it the heavens that he has condemned himself to bear? You can’t remember for certain. But you’re pretty sure that this world is a burden as great as the skies.
Tomorrow, perhaps at breakfast, you will begin to meet him halfway, profess your love to him, ask him to pardon your indifference, forgive all your misconceptions. But for now, your hands don’t make a move to massage the pinched nerves beneath the skin of his dissatisfactions. Instead, you go back to sleep, facing the wall.
You do think of him as a giant, in many ways. For one, he seems to have one foot on the past and another on the future. The bulk of him on the sheets is an undeniable landmark of the world’s grievances. His hair is an overgrowth—an unkempt garden—of every species of warfare. Just two weeks ago another lawyer was shot dead in Cebu, he told you yesterday. And some men were refugees for about a hundred feet until they fell off from the plane they were holding on to. You don’t know why he cares so much about these things, or why he seems to want you to care about them as well. He grinds his teeth, mumbles something incoherent, but you don’t bother to lean in and understand. You’re convinced that he speaks multiple languages in his sleep. And it’s true, for in one of his dreams he speaks the jargon of underpaid nurses declaring their resignation.
He stirs, and you wonder why he can’t always be like this: just spread out on the bed, flat and mute and unfenced as a virgin field of study, your area of expertise. You remember that all over his back is an archipelago of dark spots, lessons in bullet form on his body’s geography. From here to here, he lectured you once, is an avenue that used to be the namesake of a dictator’s father. Here is a sculpture of a disembodied arm that memorializes a general who led a rebellion against the Spaniards. This is the coastal road where the body of an unidentified woman was found early one morning; hands zip-tied, mouth gagged, eyes blindfolded, no signs of rape. And here is an island of people who can remember a time when super typhoon and storm surge still didn’t sit well on local tongues.
You survey his neck. It’s barren, you think, so you plant a kiss there. He stirs yet again. The silhouette of his shoulder juts out like a headland, perhaps one that is in danger of collapse, eroded by the relentless ebb and flow of time and history. The dog whimpers on the floor, and you begin to wonder if they’re charting the same nightmares. What are you missing out on? You try to observe him more closely, but in the dark he is more ambiguous than usual, an open ending that is up for your interpretation.
Tomorrow, you promise yourself, as you have promised yourself many times before, you will begin to navigate his deserts, set fire to the greater regions of this mystery: must he carry the weight of the world on his shoulders? Or is it the heavens that he has condemned himself to bear? You can’t remember for certain. But you’re pretty sure that this world is a burden as great as the skies.
Tomorrow, perhaps at breakfast, you will begin to meet him halfway, profess your love to him, ask him to pardon your indifference, forgive all your misconceptions. But for now, your hands don’t make a move to massage the pinched nerves beneath the skin of his dissatisfactions. Instead, you go back to sleep, facing the wall.
About the Author
Lawrence Diasnes is a 24 year-old frustrated writer from the Philippines. He enjoys reading short story collections by dead writers and has a habit of jotting down overheard scraps of conversation.