An Amount That Seems Complementary
When something takes over your body and goes rogue.
It’s late. My body is in the kitchen. Now it’s in the pantry.
Hands grab a party size bag of chips and a large bag of dried cranberries, the only sweet thing in the house currently. Now the bags are open on the countertop. The left hand is for the chips, the right is for the cranberries. Sandy salt granules of chips are getting under my fingernails, then all over my lips and face as my fingers wrap around as many chips they discern will fit into my body’s mouth. My hand shoves handfuls into my mouth, fingertips maneuvering any falling bits into the hole in my face, onto my tongue, between my teeth. My right hand is in the bag of sticky cranberries, those fingers separating an amount that seems complementary to the salty crunching happening in my mouth.
My hands are working quickly, in tandem, to shove salty, crunchy, sweet, sticky into my mouth and all the receptors trying to tell my brain that the chips are cutting my gums and the insides of my cheeks, that they’re getting lodged into my teeth, aren’t working. They are offline. My eyes are staring straight ahead and my brain can’t figure out what they’re looking at because those are offline, too. Nothing seems to be working except for my body’s hands and arms and jaw and some of the taste buds, yet something is keeping my body from stopping. In fact, the process is speeding up. Crumbs and stray cranberries on the counter and the floor, in my shirt and on my feet will be discovered later when everything reboots.
Right now is the time for my body to move as quickly as possible.
And right now my stomach doesn’t exist. My body isn’t feeling the crispy, chewy substance moving from my mouth into the esophagus down to where my stomach should be.
There is some level of consciousness that understands that the bags will be finished soon.
There is some level of consciousness that understands a decision needs to be made about finishing the bags soon.
There is some level of consciousness that decides that the bags will be finished soon and that is something that will have to be dealt with later in whatever way that it is dealt with later.
