The outline of his shadow gyrates and roils against the wall, a disturbing pantomime of respiration. His breaths, raspy and uneven, heave upwards with a rumble and deflate with a hiss. It is an oddly hypnotic symphony. I watch him with waning energy, sinking lower into my seat while my eyes flutter against the weight of my lashes. There is a smell about him that I hadn’t noticed before. It thickens the air with a medicinal putrid odor.I drift into an uneasy slumber.

During interludes of stillness in my fitful rest I dream that a giant centipede climbed up into the sky and wrapped itself around the sun. It tightened its coil until the last ray of light was pinched out and we were left looking at that high-up bug, all legs upon spines. It looks like a tumor, or a desolate planet.