You don't know it when it hits you. There is no alert bell, no warning message, no hint. You don't know it like you know your back pocket, or at least as you are certain that there is hunger out there. You just feel it. It winds up in whirlwinds, like a gigantic maelstrom, it grabs you with both hands, brings you down, leaves you afloat, just to hide from you seconds away, to leave a trail like a mist, in order to you to smell in the air that something is deeply wrong, that something has utterly changed, that there is nothing like the past you used to know anymore. You feel it at your fingertips, it giggles, it scratches, it tingles. Makes you want to walk on your toes, to take it with a pinch of salt, but it grows into something larger than life, into something that takes hold of you and tries to steer you into unknown. It began as a breath from the east and it turned into a state of mind that you cannot escape, whatever you would be capable to say to yourself. It grabs your shoulders to force you facing a wall that wasn't there, crushes upon you as a wall of Lego bricks that were clumsy gathered together by an inexperienced twelve year kid. It comes at the dawn, during the red weary light to leave a cloud of dust in the evening. You feel it with your entire being as it becomes a part of yourself, of what you used to grasp, to acknowledge as common, without disclosing the real aim, the scope, why it all happens to you. You can mumble it, but nevertheless when you try to articulate some crisp thought, it all crumbles in little fragments of thin air, glooming over your head. It dissolves just as you try to point your finger, to nail it to the ground. It stays with you when you need to be certain, it messes with your words when you need to be concise, to leave you on a wire, trying to find your balance during reprises. It's a crave without the object to be craven, it's a habit without the addiction, it gets you cold turkey even before you try to say no. It is the black dot beneath the old man from that question mark, it is the stiffed clerk behind the office desk, that stares at you with blind eyes. You feel as you were a prisoner left outside a world comprehensive jail, where all the guards preferred to ignore your presence, instead of politely invite you in. It's a cage with the bars bent down towards the exterior. It makes you wish for a raincoat during sunny days, it glitches in the night from beneath a chipped stone in the pavement, that grins as the golden teeth of a burglar hidden behind a curtain.