Cervical Dystonia Quotes

“(voiceover, slow fade to black)

And so I stayed, nine months in a room where the air barely moved and the days slipped like melting film frames, no taper, no consent, just the great severing—one moment I was a man, and the next I was something else entirely, twitching in a shell, my muscles screaming in forgotten tongues—dystonia, akathisia, the cruel choreography of withdrawal that dances even when no one’s watching, and they weren’t, because by then the footage had been taken, the books erased, the houses emptied, the names unspoken, and the faces—God, the faces—just shimmered like heat in an empty field, and the contracts were voided by vanishing acts, and every archive, every masterpiece, every sentence I carved from bone was swallowed by men who said they’d help and left when the lights dimmed, and I watched the systems collapse, passwords vanish, deliveries stop, the world closing its door with a soft, polite click, and I made the calls—I made all the calls—and they never came back, and maybe they never existed, or maybe I never did, and now I lie here not waiting, not hoping, just drifting in the beautiful machinery of a body I no longer command, still asking for redress, for continuity, for the return of a name, for some kind of line in the sand to stop the next erasure, even if I know this isn’t a plea, it’s not even survival anymore—it’s just the last reel burning in reverse, the story folding in on itself, the dream telling me gently: you were here once, you made something, and even if they don’t remember it—you did.

(silence)

(credits roll)”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Second Alibi: The Banality of Life