That Light

Eyes are such lovely treats. Let them age in my head. Pupils like fingerprint whorls count years like rings inside creaking trees. She assumes a languid posture for unfocusing. The slow stun strobes and the soporific burbling stimulate an ache to scratch the itch deep within the spine. Minute fibers braided and frayed encased in bone separated by flexing cartilage wave like purple sea anemone. Succulent rib bone cage bent up and out like great condor wings, a scavenger body in awkward contrapposto. Thin fingers claw tipped and taut for belly depredation. Spindly clacking knee bone rhythm walk on wind shifted dune face. Click-cluck dry tongue behind elegant teeth in wretched gums.
Bloated electronic liver filters television toxins. Distilled for brain pickle.
There must be something wrong with my optic nerve, and surely I have damaged my cerebrum. I cannot remember, I cannot remember, but when I see you there, there floating, fading, it is my brain that is looking at you, no matter how inferior. Yes
there is gray everywhere and it extends out of my body as an urban marrow, radiating from solar farms, thermal fields and synthetic trees.
This is no longer my city, or my body in it. Such realizations always strike me hard like hammer blows the kneecaps.
The last thing I remember was the blood. The blood came onto my thighs as I walked and I pretended it wasn’t happening, not as it collected in the hollows of my knees, or as the wind iced over what was left of my face. I pretended like none of it was happening. I’m down again. That’s for certain. It’s so very hard to get back up, but I do. I rise. I’ve risen like this before. Exactly like this before. Coming up from the surface. Palms on the sidewalk. Palms on my knees. Slowly. I’m up and my hands crawl around my torso and cover my face. A rhythmic humming is coming from all around. The light is strange. Cold season is here. Flat line horizon stirs with a mass like black waves. Flashes of white light strike out like needles through skin. My fingers played across my face, touched bone and came away wet. A shadow moves in front of me.
"What do you think you're trying to do?"
With my right hand I continued to explore the exposed bone structures, the rifts in soft tissue. I tried to see the shadow but it stayed on the edge of my faltering vision like a speck of dust on my eye. When I attempted to focus it slid away.
"What are you doing? What’s happened to your face?”
"Come closer," I said, "I can only see out of one eye. And not very well.” I brushed my fingers across the remnants of my lips. Touched broken teeth that felt like crude knives, arrowheads maybe.
The shadow shifted, seemed to come at me from behind boulders. I could smell something now, a mixture of ash and cologne.
“What happened to your face?”
“I still can’t see you. I can smell you, but I can’t see you.” There was a rush of air, I heard tigers screaming. I was a fountain. Sounds of bodies falling, engines roaring. Still, that hum was there, rhythmic, like a chant. The shadow shifted once more. I saw that it was made up of rags. Filthy rags whipping in the wind like shrapnel torn flags. What was inside the rags? What sort of flagpole would support this inundation?
Colors were coming back to me, still though, only in one eye. I could see beneath me, where my left hand was propping up my body, a line of green grass peeking through the dark gray and white concrete. There was red too, of course. There was red everywhere, but I chose instead to see the green grass. When would it ever be likely for me to see such a thing again?
“I think he’s had it.”
My right hand was fluttering uncontrollably over what I thought was more than likely exposed skull. Why was there no pain? The bones felt like flowers, the skin like leaves.
“I ain’t had it.”
The shadow came closer. “You look like you had it.”
Something was coming out me. A movement at my belly. Long trains, caterpillars, and metal.
“You’re bleeding again.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever stopped.” I gasped, still no pain, though it was getting hard to breathe. “I was born bleeding.”
“You’ve gotta great sense of humor about the whole thing,” the shadow laughed. I think I saw teeth. The flagpole had teeth.
“What happened?”
The shadow receded. I was left there for a while. I saw a circle in the sky or maybe it was the ground. Everything seemed reflective and it was equally possible in my mind to fly on both the ground and the sky. You simply needed the right apparatus. They apparently had it.
“Who are they?” The shadow was back, rags whirling about it.
There must be wind. Was I talking out loud? “Who are they?” I repeated. I didn’t know.
“Who is she?”
Colors were crossed. The green grass was red. I was lying in a puddle of green. It stuck to me. I couldn’t get it off. She?
“You sure that’s a she?”
“Gotta be.”
“How you figure.”
“That’s a tit.”
“That? That don’t look like no tit.”
“That’s a tit.”
“Looks like a, ah, I don’t even wanna say it.”
“Yeah.”
The blood came onto my thighs. What happened before the blood? I was walking. Surely I was walking. There were birds, but then again there are always birds. But they were acting strange, not assuming their normal patterns. Creating quite a ruckus. Wind. There was paper in the sky. White squares, we pointed… we…
“No point in leavin’ it there like that.”
“Right, right.”
“What’s he doin’ now?”
I thought my arm was a column and I was tree growing around it. Sky was my destination, starlight, sunlight, that’s what I was hungry for.
I put both my palms down in the green lake. I pushed up. The columns were structurally unsound. They buckled, but my knees came up. Volcanoes, waterfalls, geysers, I was a steam engine, cracks unsealed, roaring, spilling, gushing. I pushed.
“What does he think he’s doing?”
Light whirled. I saw buildings cracked and burned. White light meant the sun. I would go to it. Ragged shadows surrounded me. A red light turned green. There were screams. At least, I think there were screams. The whirling was distracting. I looked down. So tall. I was so tall, standing in a green lake. Where are these hands coming from?
“I will disintegrate, you will disintegrate, I will disintegrate, you will disintegrate…” The waves were closing in again. I saw the rags spin toward them. They were too late. The horizon was nothing but a hole to let the light in.

“Yeah, I was thinking that might be a good decision.”
“You think so?”
“Absolutely.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to go with the cherry one?”
“Huh-uh, it would clash with the curtains.”
“Really?”
“Honestly darling, I’ve always been better with color.”
“Well, yeah, I guess. Hey, finish up that latte and we’ll go get it today.”
“Today? You mean it?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re the best!”
“Anything for you.”
“To hell with the rest of this latte, let’s go get it now.”
“Whatever you say darling.”
“What’s that light?”