JACKSON

The alarm clock began to ring softly softly at first. It seemed to grow louder as its tones grew louder and began to make punctuated sense to Jackson. Jackson’s sleep could no longer absorb the acute rings of a clock. Digital, it had no breath, only a staccato scream.

He didn’t want to wake up, but he didn’t mind getting up. Who was he to stand up to the strength of such organic synonyms?

He couldn’t lie there, because he didn’t want to sleep—not this way. He didn’t want to smack the alarm clock, because it was just doing its job. Jackson just wished that the clock would doubt itself for once. He hoped that in that dubious instant it wouldn’t be able to bring itself to ring. If it was unsure about the correct time, or the correct alarm setting, or perhaps divided on whether or not it had already rung, it would remain silent in a state of striking angst.

Jackson wondered, what gave the clock so much confidence? What has it ever done that makes it so sure? If someone would have asked Jackson if he resented the clock, he wouldn’t have said it, but he would have meant to say, “a little bit.”And the word, ‘resent,’ wouldn’t stick or separate properly in Jackson’s prostrate posture. He understood resent, or at least he felt as if he did, but it shifted so naturally to resent with a consistently repetitive Sierra. With Sierra, one acted again in sending and with Zulu one felt disdain, possibly for the first time. He massaged the word in his mind and tried to find its natural fault line. He had always placed it at the re, because he always assigned the longest Echo he could recall. But what if it was after Sierra? What if it was Latin instead of the repetitive English? Res ent – a thing insect. It didn’t fit well, but it fit better than re-sent, and there was no logical third way.Jackson thought on resign. He shifted the fault in the same way. With a long Echo it was a contradictory action in etymology from the aggregate. Resign is not to re-sign. Otherwise, Jackson thought, it was res-ign—a thing on fire or a thing fired. One who resigns is not a thing fired, but that was contradictory in intention; it was just different. That was merely a matter of pride on the whole.

Jackson thought of the etymology of etymology, and wondered if he could parse it cold under a sheet. The end felt familiar, but that was not enough.Jackson turned to the clock, “You’re so cocksure.” He collected his overflowing body and gathered himself out of bed. His limbs always seemed to want more than his timid section could offer. Jackson’s elbows always ached.