Nocturne

Empty stomach. The kind of empty that sharpens. Coffee left its mark at the back of the throat, the smoke did the rest. The body is ready before the mind knows it.

I already know which track. It's been hanging around since this morning, stuck somewhere between the back of my neck and my ribs. I don't choose it. It's the one that stays when the others slip away.

The treadmill waits. The belt is cold under my feet. I step on and don't move yet. This moment is the silence before. The count-in. The empty bar before everything starts.

I know the timing now. The body knows it better than I do. The coffee, the smoke, the headphones, the belt, the first step. Every gesture is the same. Every night is the first time.

I hit play.

Feet lock to the beat. Like on drums. Right foot is the kick, left is the hi-hat, and the whole body becomes the tempo. I'm not running. I'm playing a track with my legs.

Eyes close.

Hands find the bars. I hold on. Not for safety. For the boundary. The bar is the last thread to the room, the floor, the world that has walls and a clock. Everything solid fits in these two hands. The rest, I let go.

The switch happens.

It used to take kilometres. Entire tracks spent running inside the noise of my own head. Now it's almost instant. The coffee cleared the ground. The smoke lifted the latch. And the music pushes the door.

The shell cracks.

Not the stress. Not the thoughts. Something older. The crust that daily life deposits without you feeling it. Day after day. Layer after layer. Until you believe the crust is you. It cracks. It falls in slabs. And what's underneath is not emptiness. It's the opposite of emptiness.

The zones light up.

I feel them. One by one. Like rooms in a dark house where someone is walking through, flipping switches. The brain wakes up. Not the one that calculates. Not the one that talks. The other one. The one with no name. The one that knows things I never learned.

The music no longer enters through the ears. It enters through the bones. Through the ribcage. Through the teeth.

And for a few minutes there is no shell. No crust. No layers. The neurons speak to each other in the open. Everything is raw. Not like a wound. Like a nerve finding air after years in a cast.

Then the track ends. The treadmill slows. Eyes open. The room is still there. The walls. The clock.

But the one stepping off is not the one who stepped on.