“I’ve been alone in this room for a thousand years.”
Neville spoke aloud to no one, as he often did. The bare, slate grey walls had a way of expanding and contracting in his mind, and on days they felt particularly close, he would deliver unfiltered speeches to an audience of his own ears.
He waited for the full ellipse of dramatic pause, satisfying an ironic desire for silence within his own oration. Placing a hand on his diaphragm, he stood, the powder blue of his linen pants unbunching from the knees and falling gracefully to his ankles.
“Sustained only by the marvel of thought, I am subsumed and transmuted.”
Neville’s room was a void, a featureless cube of smoothed cement. He bent at the waist and grazed the tips of his fingers against the floor, the other hand still pressed firmly against his abdomen. Standing straight, he opened both arms to the empty space around him.
“I reside in a grand garden, the foliage of the ages within my grasp. I survive in the great metropolis, unique and faceless both, an integral photon in an oscillating, obfuscating dance. I thrive in the earth, the air, the sea, and all of the spaces between.”
He raised both arms above his head, drawing a deep breath and stretching at the lumbar. The tops of Neville’s drab canvas shoes creased as he clenched his calves and elevated his heels. Fully extended, he pressed his palms together in a diver’s pose and let out a rush of air.
“There has grown a universe within me, and yet, the self remains somehow within it. Imprisoned but more free than I shall ever be, I am becoming paradox.”
He closed his eyes.
“Perhaps I always have been.”
And for a moment, his toes hovered just above the concrete.