Fl esh verses Thought

she plots a dream perimeter, a route composed of nothing

but detours, an imaginary line that goes nowhere

even as it returns to its origin. a death-inducing incident

shatters her mind's will to sustain motion. fragments incur, tectonics

press their earthy blades into all that once

consisted of streams; or had the ability to exist amidst motion.

blood would stop if asked for long enough to exit the body.

thought constellations no longer connect, the topsoil of warm memories

eroding. Frozen winds push forth, prompting her to pivot

away from the edge, she presses her fingers into the curve of her wrist,

and thinks of an inner space so solid, so stark and disregarded

are veins and silt icicles that press the blade, the particular event

so painful as to pulverize the spirit. She stares into space,

cavernous fields of nothing, neural pathways, a sinewy network

She touches their walls and recoils at their coldness.

foci center: a scene that plays itself over and over, they call it

post-traumatic stress disorder. a severance of her faith.

plummeted into the gorge of reality's lair-

she's awoken many times but could never shake

the notion that it was just a dream. Mother says "it is just a dream.

Go back to bed" and the doctor gave help in providing the perpetuation

of her own stable rotation, but the gas percolated up through the fissures;

afraid of ending, she is afraid of going within.

An eerie quietude settles, distills, like cobwebs

onto the chrysalis of gray matter. This must be a crescendo

of that which is too much to bear, she thinks.

It leads her far from the way she's been

step by step into the shadows. . . and beyond them,

where something glows through ancient and inward

blooming. Her question is, 'is there any meaning

in motion, even as it returns to its origin?'

and warm waves of heat wash over

fingers, her wrists, her veins. e