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.

Abandoning Desire

I abandon desire and let go of jealousy.

It is my prayer but the ears are closed and the mouth cannot move. My eyes close and I see the sphere of the world mounting over a black horizon. I am naked and the stars begin to fall in mathematical succession, one after the other, falling like beats on the measure. It is precise and I try to grab them with my extra arms but they slip like butter through cracks in the sidewalk, they fall and take the light with them.

I abandon desire and let go of jealousy.

I hear screaming in the distance, a tight space with black bricks and stale smoke that feels like mud as it enters me and smells of old tomatoes. The screams circles me with its sharp shrillness, circling me endlessly like the dark sun that cannot explode, a sun collapsing in on itself, taking every bit of matter with it.

I abandon desire and let go of jealousy.

The chains around my heart cannot let go. The rust is there, the reddish brown crust, the dark spots and hints of green. The links clink and add to the melancholy of the inverted sun. The chains are strung up like Christmas lights in a forgotten memory. Faded yellow and blue, purple that looks like pink. Those thick chains are nailed into old black bricks that have taken on the scent of old tomatoes and cigars. Walls and walls, chain after chain.

I abandon desire and let go of jealousy.

I walk naked through a dark barren landscape, I feel small pebbles beneath my toes and watch the falling stars. My white skin calls to the animals with red bulging eyes. Froth gathers at the corners of my mouth as I imagine my own destruction, a sun cannibalizing the galaxy.

I abandon desire and let go of jealousy.

A soft breeze moves over me as I move up and down on a swing. It is day and I can taste the smell of jasmine on my tongue. Another thought that springs from a time that never existed. Was it a song? A nursery poem? The breeze continues playing its tune over the curving contour of my torso, finding places to hide, finding darkness even on a summer day.

I abandon desire and let go of jealousy.

It is my hope. But I feel the relentless pull. Thick black hands cling to my ankles like serpents from the hell dimension. The wind comes over the horizon, finding me still naked, finding me with pebbles below my toes and hidden stars below my breasts.

I abandon desire and let go of jealousy.

And with the fall, and as I watch, I crumble into the void that opens wet and wide to accept me. It takes in the falling stars, the inverted sun, the pebbles and sticks and the wind that longs for a place to rest.