The world is not infinite. And that is what I have been saying, but you never listen.
The clouds stomp their feet in prayer and I hold my hands up to them so I can taste those sweet drops of milk. It was like the poem I once read, “her milk created the stars.” The drawing it once inspired. A pink and white breast against a sky of black, a waterfall of white and a sprinkling of twinkling lights. Open up your arms so you may taste the sweet drops of life.
The clouds are there, ready to give and yet we long for the sun, to feel the warmth and hide from the gray rain clouds. We resort to what feels good rather than what is helpful, what will keep these plants alive, what will finally help me to push open the door. We need the rain they shout! Those little tender sprouts looking up, drying to ash under the blanket of blue. Heat drying the land, turning my skin into parchment. But it feels good doesn’t it?
I let that skin go as I crawl over the rocks, I turn red and then black, as devilish as they fear, as conniving as the books and old tales warned. I have a tail and it will sting. It will cover you with bruises and I hope that we do meet, for I need exercise. I crawl, as evil as the men saw, turning from red and blue into clear water, covering the land that refuses to let me go. I will not die.
The world is not infinite, and yet the numbers do not lie. There are a billion micro spaces and I have known almost all. Each story is another chapter, each life another variation of the same old tale. The castles and the caves, the donkeys and their pet mice.
I have known almost all, and still, I am surprised by their little changes. The red flower instead of the blue. The upturned smile instead of the light as I remember, catching her eyes in a moment of thought. Let the thoughts flow out, but stay here, not in the tiny worlds of the market and their petty transactions, let it stay here, on this world.
The micro state of soothing electronic pulses playing a few feet from my head, where the fan whirls continuously, a drone among drones. The plush bed covered in Nordic flannel sheets of red and white, somehow making me feel warm by design, the veined fingers moving fast.
The world. Will I one day know its entirety? How many micro states are there? How many people could be in this room right now with me?
Johnny on the desk, Johnny rubbing my feet, Johnny slapping my precious cheek. The tear can fall by the window, on the sheet and quickly vanish, over my arm leaving a trail of salt. I can see each one and am gladdened by their multitude.
Too soon, this could end. But this will all be back. It will come again slightly different than before. More complex in shape. Unknowable.
* * *
It escapes from you. Or you escape it. For you hide your eyes and go under the covers like a young girl hiding from a dream.
She saw those woods, the coming light of day her only reassurance. But soon it turned to night again and she was scared of the dark branches and the thick trunks and the man who walked up ahead telling stories that terrified her flesh and made her think of death and the iron smell of fear.
Do you hide like that, from the dreams of this world; or does it escape you- running. Does it dance in the corners waiting for a moment of attention, one that almost never comes? How can little girls hopped up on sugar and chocolate cupcakes look into the corners of the room, where the sparking light takes on a multitude of colors, where chairs become vehicles of transportation, not just a resting point for a fat ass. Who escapes whom?
* * *
It is a place that sinks into the ground by the weight, the world on our rounded shoulders. I try to wash it down the drain at night.
I try and let those hands and the dollar bills and the forced laughter go washing down the sides of my wide hips and pass the obstacle of the clogged drain and down into the pipes, flowing to the ocean of salt and silt and all those other nasty things we have tried to bury and hide.
It goes to a land of layered memories and all we need to do is watch the tide come in and look out for its hands. It is never fully buried.
In the middle of the world lies the dusty valley of wheat, rags, boots, brown skin, red faces and dirty blue trucks. A little graffiti done in a rough style, like the young boys still did not know how to hold the canisters the right way, like they had yet to lose that feeling of fear that the cops would show up at any moment- we all know the older boys would go down swinging, even longed for those red and blue lights to turn ‘round the corner, to catch them with blackened fingers and bandanas over their mouths.
And though I imagine you, dust still finds its way into my mouth. The town is covered in it and I choke slightly as the scene passes.
Everything is yellow and tan- a lone young woman sits on a fallen rock by the only mini-mart for hundreds of flat miles. She’s wearing a long dress held up by worn spaghetti straps- her shoulders covered in freckles and dust. My tires kick up dingy clouds as I make a wide left turn and pull into the gas station- a bell rings and she turns her head towards me.
Did I come for the rocks and sausage? Does she wait for the one truck that will come and take her away? Or is she a fixture in this town, like a lamppost or a flag sticking out of the eaves from an old house. Eternity in a body by the side of the road.
* * *
Forests, rivers, tears and glimpses of laughter, overheard from a distance. This is what I see in her eyes. They are blue, I can tell from here. Shaded by the light green awning at the gas station- the girl continues to look at me and I at her.
Soon I will go on and she will stay, warmed and browned by the sun. We will trade places for a moment and I will sit on that rock, letting the world pass by on the two-lane highway not five steps from where I sit.
The days pass slow, the afternoon marked by birds overhead, the cars that I count, the colors that add a moment of excitement to the yellow and tan landscape. The hills behind me whisper to the sun, they match, the colors blending and punctuated only by the sky.
She goes on, taking my car, using the wheels, moving on. The world is shaped like a tilted rectangle if you watch it from above where there is safety. Here there is none.
A part of me longs for what I left, she flies like a bird in a windstorm. There is no end.
