Winds from Four Corners

I am very hard to see, as delicate as a dandelion puff. I struggle against the ferocious gusts that have been coming in increasing cycles. They started off gently, almost like a tickle against my skin, but now there is no denying their rampages. 

I can see yellow sloping hills in the distance, speckled with oaks that grow at an angle; a low river further north, its current barely visible in the distance. It is slate colored and seems locked in place, as though I am looking at a photograph. But that is all easy to dismiss.

I still linger in the walls and carpets, holding on to the orange mug in the cabinet, the books that line the shelves of my room. The twisted blankets of the bed hold my smell. I recognize it all. I know every dusty, neglected corner. The contents of every drawer, the waft lavender from the closet sachets.

I hold on to the house with open arms, large enough that I can fit it all within my grasp. Every paper and stray hair, I hold. I cling, cling as tightly as I can, against the current.
What is it that is on top of me? That light, that heat.  Those gusts which don’t seem to move a tree canopy in any direction, and yet they spiral around me, coming towards me from every angle.  
And then I feel it inside, rolling, tossing what I know, shattering those memories of silverware and linen drawers. The dreams that fill countless notebooks, it all spills outwards.

Bursts of hot energy light up in different directions.  “Don’t go there, don’t step outside the lines,” I think. I bury my face in the clothes of my top dresser drawer, smelling the sun. I look for the cat that once hid in the laundry room and can find not a piece of fluff. Colorful patterns emerge as I look up, letting myself cry. Beneath the layers that connect me to a certain gender, I feel a violent stab of spiraling currents.

I feel a dozen pairs of eyes, moving slowly up the street. They pass the house, in unison taking in the wooden tiles of the roof, the red geraniums beside the front door, the white curtains in the downstairs windows. They are here, taking me in.
Then I start to move. I can resist no longer.
I follow them for a while, then become entangled in the shifting winds. North, south, east west, they come at once, enclosing me in intangible threads, finding the hidden knot where my eyes meet.
Matter becomes a dancing cloud.

I press on the door. I can hear my own voice fading, descending. Everything pushed up from below.
The labyrinth emerges, whole, reflecting the cosmos.
And then I see it is not a reflection.
The door falls and I hear a familiar voice, not my own.
There is a change of self, a vortex, and the center of it all dissolves.