The words coming out of our mouths, of my mouth, start to slur together into one soft buzz. Can we not talk, or can I not hear? Then those questions disappear altogether, and I feel something hard under my chin. The bar top. I put my head down and watch through my one winking eye the best friend’s jaunty movements. He lurches forward and leans heavily on the bar. He moves like in a viewfinder, stopping in one pose and starting in another. I realize he’s not in an old-timey movie. As hard as I try to hold them open, my eyes are heavy and blinking.

Black. So quiet you can hear the still.

I’m hovering in some immense space; practically nonexistent, blissfully immersed in this intense calm, a constant humming certainty, like if there were a white noise machine that were whispering algorithmic equations into a room full of chalkboards. There’s darkness all around me, but I can see, or sense, into it. In an instant, I have this crisp feeling like crawling out from underneath a down comforter after 7 solid hours of sleep to stand in cold, empty room and I’m covered in spidery tingles. Without moving an inch, I’ve suddenly appeared out of nowhere. In the dark, it’s not that there is light, it’s that I am light. But no physical form. I try to blink, no eyes. Try to reach out and touch the air, no hands. I gasp from panic but even my chest feels empty. No stomach to turn. I am and I am not. The nothing moves right through me.