I am sitting in a chair.

I am sitting in a plush-velvet, wine-red armchair in the middle of my living room.

My favorite chair. My throne.

I am sitting in my favorite wine-red armchair in the middle of my 12-by-14 foot living room, hands folded in my lap, feet flat against the floor, head raised, eyes open. I can see by the glow from behind the drawn blind that it is still day outside. I have not been outside for many days. How many I cannot say.

Memory tugs at my chest, a barbed hook.

Walking freely, outside. Sun on my skin, wind in my hair. Smells: moist earth, gasoline, lilacs, Brie, sweat. Eyes free to wander the jagged cityscape. Granite, brick, concrete, asphalt. Subways, busses, taxis. Honking streets. Scurrying strangers, all rushing off to their somewheres and someones. Me, rushing with them.

How long, how long?

Ten days? Twenty?

And then, duzgh! the doors closes and I am inside. Not free. But freer -- than now.

My building, my world. Marble-tiled lobby, with its gold-etched mirrors and rows of brass mailboxes and faded blue carpeting and amber-hued teardrop chandelier. My lobby. Free to walk its circumference, my hand gliding along its cool marble walls. Free to feel its cathedral height, its stretched space. The elevator, with its lurch and groan and stuck doors and stale air. The stairwell, all seventeen echoing flights. And, of course, my hallway. Narrow, bare-walled, thick-piled, dim hallway. But mine. Hard to let go.

I trace my right forefinger along the edge of my beard. How many days since I last shaved? The hairs stand out as a bristly plateau above the plain of smooth, unwashed skin. I rub the back of my hand hard against my chin. It burns, feels good. Sandpaper.

Next, the apartment. All five rooms: living, bed, work, bath, kitchen. Closets. Cabinets. Seven hundred square feet: a solar system, a galaxy. Mine to wander, whenever, wherever. To explore.

And then one day -- too soon, too soon! -- no more workroom. A few days later, no kitchen. Then no bath. No bed.

Just living room. My living room. 14-by-12 feet. So many steps, different paths. Chairs to walk around, sofa to lie on. Walls to lean up against, feel their strength, their rootedness. Endless possibility, endless space.

Gone, now. Wine-red armchair, nothing else.

Even this has its bulk, its breadth. Softly frictioned fabric, strong arms. Massive legs, whorls of curved wood crouched on clawed globes. Lofty, proud back. A throne's back. My throne. My world. No escape. No need.

I lift my legs onto the chair, hug my arms around them, bend my head into the cleft between my knees. Cover my ears with inner thighs. Rushing silence. A deep pulse, a high whine. Cheeks warm, enclosed. Body folded into itself, a retracted blade.

I close my eyes. Swirling darkness. Flecks of color, of light. No more window, walls. Gone, like the rest. All the rest. Now just flickering darkness and pitched silence. Nothing else, no one.

A pinpoint of light, just at the edge. Growing. Nearer, nearer. Colors, but none: a rainbow white. And growing. Filled now, I jump on, climb inside, fuse, fall.

No more body. Arms, legs, stomach, chest, head: all gone. Light, just light. Pulsing, dilating. Throbbing.

Shrinking.

Self-enclosing, blotting away. A balloon with a leak. A balloon, unballooning. Smaller, smaller.

A pinpoint again. And still shrinking.

A speck, an iota. A grain of a grain. An atom's atom.

Smaller than thought -- and still, and still.

Ssssssssss ...

There:

Gone.