Justin wakes up with a dry mouth. He’d been snoring all night again from exhaustion. Closing it, he feels like his mouth was filled with cotton from the dentist. A film of oil had materialized overnight on his face. He feels his stomach. Empty. Without even moving them, he knows that his arms are weak now. His legs are weak now. His body feels light. With as little movement as possible, Justin reaches for the electric fan at the foot of his bed and turns the knob to zero. Without even realizing it, this is one of Justin’s favorite feelings in the world. He feels like a sponge that had been sitting, forgotten, at the bottom of a dank kitchen sink and had only now been washed up and wrung out. All the grease, soap, tiny scraps of food and sauces that had dried up on their diner’s plates and diluted into water, all that filth that had been in him was wrung out from him. Empty. His clothes from the night before almost felt like a second skin; the sweat and oil had fused t-shirt to upper back, shorts to hips and underwear to balls. He yawns. He breathes out. The final drop of filth exercised from his body. The air is taken from his lungs. He feels good and he knows it. He feels so good that he falls asleep again.

An alarm goes off. Empty. The alarm comes from his sister’s room. As soon as the awareness of his head on his pillow sets in, Justin feels the weight of guilt piling upon his chest. So much so that it makes his lungs quiver with his first conscious breath of air as if he were eight and had the night spent in another self-important tantrum.

Justin feels tired. His eyes open, gaze directed to the scotch tape-scars on his bedroom wall from photographs long since removed. Below them, his cluttered desk sits under an even blanket of dust which protects it from use. On the other side of his room is a bookshelf decorated with half worn spines. Mandatory college and high school readings serve as fillers to his lack. Justin holds his breath and braces himself to get up out of bed. Ten seconds pass, fifteen, twenty-five, now fifty-three. Justin allows his lungs to deflate but he’s still in bed.