Instructions on How to Draw Curtains

Day Twenty-One

Approach the window but take care not to look outside.

Draw the curtains with a shrugging motion. When they meet, keep going. Make sure they are double-drawn, then triple-drawn, to wholly prohibit the window. 

Continue drawing curtains around the whole room, mantling first the walls, then the ceiling and floor, all with dramatic velvet. 

Keep drawing curtains. If you think you should stop, don't. Enshroud the doors so that there's no way in or out. 

Cloak well anything reflective. Swathe the bookshelves and the photo frames. Swaddle all that's precious or breakable until it is unaccountable. 

Draw the curtains, like twine, through the legs of your bed and anywhere you might rest. Draw them over the places where you might put down and forget the things you carry. Make the room an envelope, folding in on itself in layers of heavy, drawn drapes. 

Keep going until you cannot stop drawing curtains all around yourself, making a room full-to-the-rafters of furrows, fast and tight, smothering absolutely all light and air and sound. 

Draw a breath. Now the room is nothing but curtains, waiting to be drawn.