I.
The room (or memory) is a blaring white
of a fly trap, a blinding illumination
of buzzing that attracts my mind only
to zap any feeling into non-existence.
The horse blinders kept me looking
down and forward, the food-splattered
ground moving beneath my feet like
a conveyor belt; my mind pressing stop
and play as programmed.
II.
White pinstripes led my eyes like tiny roads,
the pattern of pantsuits covered
in powder, elongated and straight,
now somehow abstract. I had never seen
black look so bright; an ebony torch in
the burning eradication of visual senses. I,
non-invisible for a brief moment, became
a dimple in your cheek.
III.
The speckled granite shined sloppily,
oiled by our beers and the gloss in our
eyes, sliding off the blinders that shielded
me from the abrasive lights. Finding myself
suddenly close to you, my physicality
growing apparent as I felt myself assuming
form, and as you spoke to me, existence
pounced onto me like a cat on a toy mouse.
IV.
Visibly invisible, my molecules faded
in the morning mist of a winter storm,
my shutters hanging by a hinge and
creaking in the wind. I, a condemned
house, soiled and rotting in a vacant
lot. You walked past me on your way
to school and wondered who used to
live there.
V.
Spring came, then summer, and
the bees came back to where the
Magnolias grow like big pouting
eyes. The dandelions cushioned my
sleepy head as I daydreamed
of the thousand wishes you had,
or may have had, as you kissed
them into the wind that sent them
into the clouds.
VI.
They flicked on the light
again, and in it’s searing white glow
I saw ebony flames, a hazy silhouette
I ached to see through blinders. You said
Something.
Something
to me.
Something
foreign; familiar. But the letters jibber
and jumble and all I can remember is the
cackling crackle of flames and the smell
of ash.
VII.
I wandered on stage, the spotlight
melting my skin, exposing the raw
soft flesh of organs, then bones, and
I became a dancing skeleton with a
perpetual smile; the dogs came for
me, tore me to splinters and sucked
the marrow dry. I became the ghost
that haunted my dreams. They swept
me into a dustpan and turned off the
light,
and it was then,
that I found you
waiting for me in the darkness.
