Unsober-Latent

-He gets off the bed, stepping on the blanket, which remains on the floor, gazes around the room laconically before exiting it, toward the bathroom.
Even when he lets go of things, he has this tendency of holding on. The thought crosses his mind as the light comes on in the small mildewed bathroom, the trickle sound of water splashing, it’s like the wall. And he thinks about the walls of the old house. They’ve been painted over countless times, so that when you sit in a room long enough, simply staring into them, you can make out the outlines of whatever it was that previous owners wanted to hide. As he washes his hands, three times as always, it’s his compulsion, he continues staring into the yellowed, once off-white walls. The almost presence, lingers.
He mimics lighting a cigarette, the habit left over after the habit. He smoked for a good ten years and at twenty five he’s not sure if it’s an accomplishment or a shame. But he quit. Still, mornings, sometimes he’ll wake feeling the bruise sensation of his lungs, like when he used to smoke a pack before drifting off into unsober dreams.
He sits on the couch and closes his eyes trying to remember a face he once saw in a dream. It was on one of those unsober nights. He had stumbled through the streets, braking often, crashing only slightly, scratching his rims in the process, his blurry vision being the obstacle to his getting to his bed and bedroom, leaving him stranded on the living room floor. And it was in that cold sparsely furnished room, with the windows open that he had set to dreaming. His eyes racing behind the thin skin covering. It’s now a dream he has no recollection of, much less the night, but when he woke, the soft spot on the carpet frosted over, could still feel those light hazel eyes behind his brown. There was almost a face, as he lay there dazed, having no knowledge of anything except that semblance he repeatedly tried to recapture in the dark space of his mind.
He was unsuccessful then, but it’s something he comes back to on days like this when he’s woken several times before waking. Something about being between sleep and consciousness. And he repeats the ritual, as it was begun on that morning that is now itself a vague impression in his mind. He stares into the darkness of the room and closes his eyes with a deep sigh, opening them quickly, blinking rapidly and closing them again. This time tightly, while heaving sigh after sigh. It’s this ritual he’s come across at least a dozen times, in the year since that unsober night. Each time he’s come no closer to recapturing that face in his mind and has succeeded only in making a greater impression of this semblance. Never uncovering it’s raison d’etre, further mystifying it’s meaning, if it indeed has one, and he’s always been one to believe that it does.
He sits there, after the deep sighs and feels winded, the remnants of carcinogens reawakened in his lungs. His head feeling light and his eyelids heavy. A sudden burning behind his eyes, and as they close, he can make out small hazel circles staring back at him from somewhere between the thin skin covering and his pupils. There is nothing else but the light hazel orbs. He feels at peace, a certain awareness of peace, and his eyes begin racing and still all he can see are her eyes, still nothing more.