Popping Peristalsis

The silence, heavy as it was, felt like a second skin. When he turned his neck, there came a soft, internal squelching, a reminder that his body—this strange, unreliable vessel—was nothing more than a mechanism of flesh and sinew. The sound brought to mind the popping candy of his childhood, that small thrill of sweetness erupting on the tongue, and how if you were too eager, too impatient to savour it, the little explosions would carry on all the way down your throat, borne by that unconscious, ceaseless motion they called peristalsis. Peristalsis—the word itself was a kind of poetry, a mechanical beauty he'd long since forgotten until this moment of stillness brought it back. He supposed he would have learned that in a biology lesson around the time he was consuming this junk and now the two were inextricably combined in a way which neither would have ever imagined becoming bedfellows.

A fleeting notion passed through his mind: was it dangerous, this simple act of turning his head? Was he, in some small, imperceptible way, grinding down the delicate joints at the base of his skull? He pictured his skeleton, pale and brittle, a thing of frailty. Like the mast of a ship, the spine held his head aloft, and yet he felt the absurdity of it, as if his head were a crow’s nest, teetering and unstable. One ought not be able to turn a crow’s nest. That much was certain.

The intrusion came suddenly, a noise carried on the wind, not close but insistent, like a stray thought pressing its way into his mind. The faint strains of a song—Africa by Toto, of all things—drifted through the open window, followed by the voice of some overzealous man playing at being Tony Blackburn. The jarring cheerfulness of it all sent a ripple through the still air, and he could see the afternoon unfolding before him now, not as it had promised in those first quiet moments, but as a series of interruptions. It seemed an affront to close the windows on such a perfect day, the kind of day she would have adored, yet there was little choice. The outside world, in all its banalities, had forced its way in.

For a moment, the thought of his fragile bones vanished, and he rose swiftly, more fluidly than he would have expected, moving with the certainty of a man who still believed in action, despite the growing evidence to the contrary—just in time to catch the opening phrases of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. He pushed the window shut with a relieved "Done," as if he had just wiped up a spill of orange squash from the table. The kind of messes that used to appear out of nowhere, the remnants of sticky afternoons filled with laughter, and the faint scent of childhood still lingering in the air. Those days, long behind him now, seemed at once distant and near, folded into the fabric of the room like a shadow caught in the light - isn't that what photographs are? Little memories. They used to be so little.