Rubatosis - the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat

Blue-gray light streams through the open window. The pale breeze floats the silky curtains into the room, papers slightly lifting off the desk before settling back into their place. Freshly shaven legs entwine the soft blankets, covering sections of limbs, leaving others open to the air; small arm hairs stand upright like little toy soldiers, a result of the airy chill. Deep vermillion socks scrunch messily around narrow ankles, barely poking out from beneath the warmth. Velvet hair loosely covering the pillows, slowly drying from a previous shower. In the background, a noise arises from the deep hollows of her chest: a small beat. Another. Another. Heavy thumping, caged within xylophone bones echoing around waxy ear canals. A childhood drum-set symphony playing a soundtrack to empty nights; where instead of laughter the only sound is a human organ dribbling a basketball on newly laminated floors. Beats of endless dripping faucets fill the hollow weights pressing down on flimsy chest plates. The normally comforting pulse of the vascular system drowns in unsettlement.

Perhaps it’s the only way to know we’re real, that the radiator hidden beneath flesh and bone wildly spinning out of control is the engine keeping systems alive.