regarding your out of body experience

(on certain mornings, with a certain electricity hanging in the air over the clouds, you wake up suddenly, just before dawn. the sun rises in the east and through your window facing west you see the sky slowly changing colors, and you are in the wrong body. the sheets and pillows are cold, clothing stiff and unfamiliar. in the hall, the missing chunks of plaster and falling posters and red bathroom door are home to no one; uninhabited. but still you find yourself here, tiptoeing down the carpet, up the stairs, over your sleeping friends, through the window, on the roof. time passes like something distant, colorless, like the fuzzy projection of an old movie that you dream you were a part of.)

it happens just before dawn, in the hours of breathing that so often go unnoticed. the space where fingernails grow and eyelids collect a thick yellow dust and the sky begins to lighten, just a little, in preparation for the slowly moving sun. it happens with the suspension of the senses and the seven wonder of the world and television.

it happens like looking down on passing time and slowly aging lives. something spiritual, in transit to the clouds, suspended somewhere close to the ceiling. tough boys drinking hot chocolate to escape the rain, middle aged women reassuring each other of their beauty, someone crying on the sidewalk outside of a funeral home, passing by as if you saw them from above. prompting the questions, is this life? do i live here?

"there was never nothing," reads the title to a gray painting that is hanging on a wall in a coffee shop -- something, somewhere.