Despite the fact that my body was withdrawing from my control, this didn't stop it from demanding and creating needs. The longer I lay in my cocoon, the more often certain cravings arose in me that could not be satisfied. Due to the limited field of vision, my look had just lingered on the oranges that were carefully stacked on the unremarkable table. The orange color glowed intensely in the twilight, which gave my sterile room a golden coating. I thought of how I used to eat oranges or drink their juice. With these thoughts, I felt my salivary glands start to work. The first contact of my mouth with the orange, when I wanted to take a hearty bite, allowed its fibrousness to define my perception for a brief moment. The outer skin was somewhat elastic and yet firm, so that the teeth did not pierce the fibrous layer directly, but merely deformed it for a moment before the layer gave way, burst open and squirted a sweet and sour liquid under high pressure into my oral cavity, causing every muscle in my face to contract.
I wanted an orange juice. I craved an orange juice. My body and my mouth, my throat and my stomach, every fiber of my body screamed for a glass of the fruit that lay a few feet away from me in the glaring sun, yet so unreachably far away. I could see it, could have taken two or three steps and satisfied my need if my body hadn't completely refused my will and pinned me to the bed. The desire for the simplest things that were so inaccessibly close made my body scream, explode and convulse on the inside. But on the outside, I was completely calm. My body didn't move a millimeter. A stormy ocean raged inside of me, but on the outside I was a calm sea.
The idea of being cut off from even the smallest pleasures in life and having insatiable desires tormented me. I wanted my eyes to tear up, but they remained dry. The source of my tears dried up, as did the spring that no longer fed the slowly drying lake of my hope.