Bathroom Monologue: Gaia Man

The sun nudges his hips. Tides lap at his face and hips, tugging at him, sedimenting his hide, begging him to play. In youth, he liked nothing more than the waltz with the heavens across that spray. Now, he doesn’t have the will to get up.

He’s so tired. Just one hand feels like it weighs a billion tons, and his joints are locked in fossils and granite. When he tries to stir and put on a show for the elements, he finds his fissures are deeper than ever, shooting pains down the tectonic plates of his spine.

He collapses into the geography, simply unable to rise with this day, this year, this age. He’s been so tired for so long that he can’t remember the last time he really did something in the world, yet before he grew old, didn’t he do enough? Can’t those civilizations living on his hide figure it all out without him?

His legs are too vast to move, and it’s so warm beneath the grass and shores. It’ll be cold if he gets up. He’s earned the right to warmth. Even his eyelids, hanging sheets of shale, are so wizened he can’t tell if he’s opened them. He doesn’t ask to dream. He just wants to lie down and let the stupid humans do it for themselves for once.