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