What has never been curious is the cold.
Nor the heat.
Not even the moment when one replaces the other.
What is curious is everything that happens around it.
The metal touches the skin.
Then it disappears.
Then it returns.
The body tries to classify the sensation.
It fails.
For a few seconds it seems cold.
Then it seems like something else.
Not more intense.
More difficult to name.
The room remains the same.
Nothing appears to have changed.
Yet the body reacts as though something important has just happened.
What surprises me most is not the impact.
That always seems important at first.
The strange part comes afterward.
There is a crooked coat hanger leaning against a wall. I do not know why I keep looking at it. It has been there all afternoon. It has nothing to do with what is happening and yet it keeps returning to my attention as if it were trying to remind me of something.
The leather moves through the air.
Then it disappears.
Then it returns.
And each time I discover less about the strike and more about everything that happens around it.
The body tries to anticipate it.
It fails.
It tries again.
It fails again.
At some point I stop thinking about resistance or strength. Those are words that are too large for what is actually happening.
What is happening is much smaller.
A breath that arrives late.
A muscle that tightens too early.
The absurd sensation that a seam in my clothing has become more important than anything else in the room.
There is a clock somewhere.
I cannot see it.
I only hear an occasional click.
For a few seconds I become convinced that it has stopped.
Then it sounds again.
Or perhaps it never stopped.
I am not sure.
That uncertainty occupies more space than it should.
Little by little the impact stops being an isolated event.
It begins to behave like weather.
Something that reorganizes the environment without asking permission.
The coat hanger remains leaning against the wall.
A door shifts slightly in a current of air.
Someone is speaking in another room.
The words are too distant to understand.
Everything continues to exist.
And so do I.
But not in quite the same way.
I try to determine whether my neck is actually motionless.
I reach no conclusion.
For a few seconds all of that is easier to understand than my own body.
I am not moving it.
My neck has locked up.
I should…
