I still have the desire to chase these life-affirming actions, to smell the twisted poppies, within the lifeboat of my dreams.
Six long months ago; hours bend and refract through the single frosted window pane, they constrict my neck like a home-made noose. That was the first six months (but what are months? Whose operations of time do I serve?), after which I felt the singular empowerment of having nothing left to lose, of the pats on my back that sustained a spineless fear—surviving this blunt (but obscure) fear of death by sheer neglect within this washed-up, sterile infirmary! But I am here yet—do you wish to congratulate me?
Obviously, the romance, like bitch’s crystal adrenaline spikes is fleeting and forgettable. Now it is listlessnesssssssssssssss. Tempered with latent, droning anxiety of an imminent avalanche (these sterile white walls hang so precariously!) that may consume my vulnerable heart… Endless cycle of fear, of exposure—then gratitude for the feeling of my own warm breath, for still living and existing—washes into sullenness, isolation—now back into that comfortable fear.
I am no more a person, a Volk, then a mobilized, medicalized evil; an ivy Medusa fucking the civilized world into oblivion! These attacks are venomous, of Scythian archers dressed in flowing blank cloaks, or the rags of my paltry progenitors, aimed at my undeveloped breasts—“deviant”, “degenerate”, “monster-terrorist-faggot” are the fissures that penetrate and dangle ridiculously from the hind of my pierced fleshed…I am no longer mobile, no longer noble.
But they cannot sanitize this greater kingdom. And when the rains come in Seattle, the Great Floods fall for a time without end. In the evening when the fluorescent fixtures flicking and flirt with darkness, I feel the foundation of this ignoble tower tremble majestically, vacillating like the fox-tails in the sea.
Waters, like star-struck adolescents, trickle in to greet their wounded hero; the procession grows until the pressure is too much for that pale school boy of a window, it shatters down the center a vomits the remaining legion of dewy cobalt thread… deeper and higher, the sounds swirl in the most simply-enchanting melody— the room like a broken cargo hull and, I, the remaining ballast. As I embrace this divine embrace, most surely the numb breast of death, I am liberated of anxiety, an angel floats out of its prostrate body; I fall into ecstatic paralysis, so damn close to the waking world, yet so dramatically opposed, so chaotically strung together, as plastic baubles festooned by human hair. Before my eyes, beneath by body my bed stretches above the occupied water (with its own agenda)—the army cot re-animates, grows then decays into the deck of worn-out clipper. The white linoleum cell blocks melt, rather dissolve, within the magic liquid—I am no longer trapped, I am before the sea again.
I can only tell of the images that slide in an order without continuity or concern; this world, my kingdom, operates in another way, one with sense but no method. The day is light again, the journey from darkness, the temporary deliverance makes me breath, shallow, exultant breaths; I am walking, upright and with as much latitutde as the humble boat will allow. I’m standing at the wheel, the gears that control this engine, as the sails whip and howl overhead, I veer us towards the coast. The landscape, the seascape is dappled with xxxxxxxxxxx’s—signals of my desires, each crossing line is a song of my victory! I chase them but cannot catch them, but the pursuit fills my life with elusive significance. They snow down like flakes, then are suspended like idle dragon flies; they are ribbons in my hair.
Across the horizon, the colossal X with its square-rigged mast, sails my way. I do not know if it is the marker of my fullest desire, a tightly-wrapped gift that I cannot comprehend, or perhaps an inimical cross, the very crux of life, a triangulation of suffering and non-existence; it sails on. It is bridesmaided by seven decaying first-mates, angry or excited, brandishing their weapons, using the blades to sharpen the tips of their empty hands. I want to take them in, to learn my fate through the experience, to gamble on my life by the risk of the x, at the risk of my ephemeral dream.
I move the wheel, but I cannot grip—my hand is taken, only a comical hook protrudes stupidly in a confused loop. It is burdensome. The other hand, perhaps taken by some other disease or some other doctor, is sewn, with disheveled, amateurish grace, decorated by the same xxxxxxxxxxxx’s that fills my vision.The days are long, one still has not passed. The birds circle. The sky is now empty. The map is a child’s scrawling. It was yanked from a naked refrigerator.
I don’t move anymore. I feel like a scarecrow. I feel a wall flower on my elbow. I am confined again.
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