Bed Rest

Loretta spent several days in bed recovering from a badly sprained ankle. She began to think about her bedroom's arrangement in terms of all the individual entities co-existing there: coverlet, sheets, pillows, nightstand, lamp, dresser with mirror, several art works on the painted walls, ceiling fan, door and its crucial knob, slippers, two windows. Each piece of the room's picture puzzle asserted its separateness, but Loretta could effortlessly shift focus to the way the various objects formed a togetherness. Neither of these conditions--separate and together--strove to exceed the other in importance. Loretta was the reasonably still centre, whose perception organized and dispersed the room's malleable components. She stopped thinking about the room as an enigmatic container, then placed her hand on her heart and attended to its beat. Her body was an old room containing a ticking clock, signifying life. Life. There was new breath in her nostrils. She hugged herself with her soft arms, remembering how her mother checked in on her and warmly embraced her when she was ill.