The river has been fenced off for years.  The rapids just are too dangerous.  In storms it engorges and rages.  Everyone in the nearby towns has known this for generations.  The thing has claimed lives going back to the days before the towns even had names.  The froth and foam is deceptive though.  There is a beauty to foam in the way of morning fogs and gentle fair-weather clouds.  The water flows no matter what and herein is the crux of it all.

My son is under that water.

He has been for three days now.  I got the call when his friends knew it was too late, that their lark had taken him under.  They were drinking and had two of the crowd climb the fence on a dare.  Tommy got out ok but my Jimmy, he slipped on a wet stone and the water pulled him downstream.  He was 19.  He was tall and thin and bright and should have known better.  He is past tense now and it is killing me.  His things wait as though nothing has changed.  His shoes and coats and all the rest wait still awaiting action as does his car, our love, his present, his future, all the terrestrial details.

He spins under that foam.

The funeral director, an odd comma shaped old man always hunched forward, quiet and polite is calling again.  Straight to voicemail you bleak cloud.  He has it all ready.  He has for over a day now.  He has questions.  The digits of his number haunt now as it goes to message.  He means well.  He also has a job to do.  The flowers will fade soon.  The wood awaits its passenger.  The room is booked in the coming weekend.  

My boy spins.  You can see flashes under that water as it flows.

Two  towns over is that freak tree.  It attracts tourists.  They crowd in to take perfect sun lit selfies.  It is thick and the branches run odd angles like a sort of slow wooden lightning upward.  The shade is thick under them on hot days.  That is not what attracts them though.  Not at first.  There is a story.  There is past in the thick of the trunk and older branches.   It holds ghosts too.  Not literally but of something else.  The pictures are of where something began and where something ended.

The tangles of hair spin octopus bright orange at times I have been told. Then nothing again for a time.

I am sitting right now in my truck by a place that once served the best pancakes for fifty miles.  So it was said anyway.  Flapjacks they called them then.  The place was built in 1915 when the mines were opening up in the desert hills.  The stories in the 30’s were of the flapjacks big as helmets, sweet as candy, fluffy with perfect melted butter.  My grandparents swore some of it was actually true.  My father swore about the butter anyway.  It is a physical ghost now, a burger joint/truck stop that serves slop and grease to mostly open mouth empty red cracked leather booths.  

They say he looks like he is smiling when his face comes to the surface.

I am sitting in my truck listening to the same music for hours again.  The walk to that fence may as well be to the moon or Atlantis from where I sit right now.  The mayor said the fence cannot be torn down further after the rescue truck fell in the water on Monday.  The sheriff swears that they will find a way.  The hospital swears they will reduce the bill I have to pay for the poor driver they had to fish out downstream when the pulley failed and it all just fell in.  The funeral director still has not finished whatever treatise he is babbling to the voicemail, the whole thing for now submerged inside the plastic and metal of my phone.

My son’s last voicemail also sits submerged along the growing army of calls I am ignoring.  I have not heard it yet.  Not sure when and how I will be able to pull it and his voice up.  The fence is a landmark now.  The site makes the piss poor town good money.  Selfies like that tree miles from here.  The river is perfect for photos as it is big and the rapids break blue to white, smooth water to clouds of foam.  It also is dangerous.  The fence was fought against for years for that reason. Money.  Nice photos.  

I saw him once.  He spun for a second up as if ready to swim away. To wave and come out to dry clothes.

The tree holds glass and rusted metal in its flesh.  It has for many years.  The tourists take selfies by the beautiful curiosity.  A shiny fake bronze plaque now even summarizes the story. A young couple raced on a summer night under a full moon (so it goes..)  and drunk on young love and alcohol hit the tree full on.  They hit it so hard the the Model A  Ford wrapped an embrace clear around the trunk and a few branches.  The couple were pulled clean, survived barely and to legend later married and grew old together while the car remained, a physical memory of that foolish, giddy, free moment.  The truth of course is quite different, but it makes for a nice highlight on an otherwise dishwater dull itinerary.

Some are talking of leaving him there.  I swear I heard the murmurs.  He will be taken away though.

I read a story as a boy once that was fiction but foolish young me took me to be literal, to be true.  A pilot in ww2 was flying fairly low over farms and fields.  He had been hit twice in a wing.  The engine smoked and sputtered.  The sun blazed oblivious and warm.  The clouds drifted placid as he knew he would fall.  The pilot thought of where he might end up.  It could be open grass.  It could be piles of hay.  It could be low rolling hills.  He worried of a family he imagined having a dinner together, plates at the ready, napkins, forks, stories to perhaps share of the minutia of the day.  He could almost see each face, hear each voice, smell the bread.

I cannot accept my boy is dead. Not until I can see him one more time.  Not under water.

The boys who dared my son have apologized to me, my wife and his brother and sister many times in these last few days.  I so want to blame them whole.  To place gravity itself on some pale teen’s pimply shoulders.  I sometimes want them to leave this town and never return.  I also want to break time clean open and rip its innards back to past to save my boy.  None of these things are of the rational.  I know it. 

The couple and that tree.  That story is so mutated now.  It is a beast born from the few atoms and molecules of an initial truth.  It is a fiction woven around something quietly tragic.  The boy never fully recovered from that awful crash.  They were 16.   He later married and lived to his end, but he had later medical issues and married a cruel shadow of who he once loved, a charlatan with a similar face some used to say.  She recovered physically but lost something of youth and wonder that night and moved away to never return.  The photos are grand though.  Selfies shining by the odd tree and grand falsehood on shiny, bronze plaque.

Death is an abstract thing.  I see it now.  I feel it. I wish I never did.  It is all like worn clothes.

My truck has the music I like.  It has my cooler full of drinks and snacks.   It has windows.  It has doors.  It also has no bones or skin and is neither alive or dead.  I thank it for this.   I am sitting here as I had to come to see where he lays and to advise the others on what must be done.  The new plan must be made.  It is with kindness I know (and have been somewhat coldly and cruelly told)   that the plan is not just done around and past me, the father.   Something has to be done.  I have been asked to make sketches.  Sketches.  Take photos.  Photos.

The talk is that a helicopter may be brought in from far away.  The talk is that it will be soon if it can be seen as possible.  My son loved animals.  He once said he dreamed of being a scientist.   He was yet to fall in love but he had an amazing best friend and she had him as hers.  His room near shivers at night as the lights dim, I have seen it.  It is almost like the walls themselves and wallpaper wait for him still, sense also their fate if he is to never return.  There are no services held for the things of a life, there is no grave for the possibilities cut clean of a life.   The pilot in that story never crashed into that farmhouse dinner but in his memory he saw for years clear clean what could have been, he mourned them as what could have been.

I soon will physically exit this truck. In moments I must draw logistics.  I must take photos.  I will soon enough no matter what have to face it all, say the goodbye I still so dread.  I will walk leg before leg, foot before foot, complete the mundane but needed tasks I have been asked.  The man leaving the voice mail now still will get that call back.  There will be a service, a pale, thin ceremony.  I will do this all. I will.  But not yet. Until I open and close the door he may as well be still alive waiting with words to greet me, greet us all.  Things will go into motion, processes and actions to get things done as they do, as they should I suppose.  It is a sunny day and clear. 

My boy spins there still.  

 

 

Leanne Neill is a creative director of fashion, mother of three, and a self-professed ‘composer of words.’ She has over twenty years of experience in public libraries and local government. In 2016, she started her poetry and art inspired Facebook page : LUST for WORDS, and has since been published in many ezines and pages including Spillwords, Bymepoetry, including their WOMb anthology, The Scarlet Leaf Review, Blue Nib, Raven Cage, Husk Magazine, and US anthologies, Dandelion in a Vase of Roses and Warriors With Wings.

Her poem “Transition” was highly commended at the 11TH annual Coal Creek Literary Festival in 2018. Her first collection, Fine Lines and Unpolished Pieces of Me was published by The Australia Times in 2017. Her second poetry collection, Blue Lotus was released in June, 2018, Leanne lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Instagram : lust_for_words_by_leanne_neill

Even with the sun hanging low in the sky, saturating it with an orange the exact shade of a frozen can of OJ, Matthew wasn’t too impressed with the temple complex. Standing on the main avenue that ran straight to the three towers, he couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed. Anyway, his girlfriend, Carrie, wanted to visit the place, and he was more than willing to go along. Still, he could not help but feel he could be in any tourist trap: the Taj Mahal, an ancient Roman road that lead to an acropolis, Main Street in Disneyland. Too sterile perhaps. Even the few palm trees that stood at attention on either side looked fake. Too many people walking towards the towers even at sunrise. Though he knew he was being pretentious, he wouldn’t have minded if the people on the walkway were locals or pilgrims. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. He could almost smell the foreingnness sweating out of their pores. Cameras and smart phones already raised and snapping away to capture the orange sunrise and the hazy grey outlines of the temple towers.

With her hand wrapped around his sweaty palm, Carrie moved forward, tugging him along. The early sunlight was still positioned behind the complex, so he could not see her face as she looked back at him. But he knew she was smiling, a display of simple, unforced happiness. They were at that stage where they were growing comfortable with each other’s silences. They were beyond that stage of conversation when they had to mine each other for information or they were driven by the need to engage, entertain one another.

As they approached the main section of the complex, the slight disappointment did not diminish. Matthew could not shake off the feeling that they were in a generic space. The hushed dark interiors with the grey columns holding up the ceiling could have been anything, anywhere. There were courtyards open to the sky with the growing power of the sun beating down on bleached sandstone flooring. The statues with their sinuous poses, particularly the feminine ones with their impossibly ripe and round breasts all blurred together in his mind. He kept thinking about Egyptian temples, gothic cathedrals in France, Mayan pyramids. Any place that smacked of cultural enrichment. Not that Matthew had actually been in any of these locations. That was what the internet was for. Access for a speech instructor at a community college in a California suburb like him.

Soon enough he grew bored, but he had Carrie. They were standing in front of a giant stone archway that rose to a point. Three giant heads sat on top, each facing his designated direction. Their serene faces were worn down and streaked with lighter shades of grey. Matthew wondered, in a moment of inspired irreverence, if they suffered from bird shit. Turning his attention on Carrie, he watched her stare at the giant heads with the studied concentration of someone reading some obscure and difficult text. Like the other visitors, she murmured an exclamation of admiration. No, scratch that. The other tourists emitted loud whispers that grated on his nerves. They should’ve kept their voices at a normal level, so all of them could blend into a white noise that he could ignore.

The only thing remotely interesting were the trees that invaded the different parts of the complex. They reminded him of gigantic fungus, creeping over the sandstone bricks, consuming walls and chambers. Like an alien force. The roots seemed more like a kind of grey liquid dough that had suddenly hardened over certain sections of the temple buildings. They seemed to like corners, Matthew thought.

He looked over to his left where the trees appeared to be more numerous and spotted a line of orange robes walking on a path, disappearing among, what appeared to Matthew, a jumble of roots and loose stone.

Then inspiration hit him. Grabbing Carrie’s hand, he strode after the disappearing line of orange, ignoring Carrie’s mild protestations and questions. The light darkened as they approached the trees, and a blessed coolness descended on them, even it was only a few degrees cooler.

Adventure, Matthew reminded her. You wanted adventure, right?

The path zig-zagged through what looked like a maze to Matthew. The light had deepened into a murky twilight, the towering trees fighting to snuff out the sunlight. Individual bricks lay discarded, making an uneven border for the twisting path. This was more interesting. Forging on, deeper into the murk, every so often, a tree had poured its roots onto the walls. Matthew could see where the tree has cracked open a room. Dark holes or slots exposed between individual roots to indicate emptiness inside.

Here, he told Carrie, stopping in front of the gaping maw of a crumbling room or chamber. A particularly impressive tree was sitting on top of the chamber, and Matthew realized it had at some point become the roof. A low sort of wall, much lower than the back of the room-like structure, stood about twenty or so feet. The reason for it being so low was due to one thing, the invading root system. In fact, a thick root lay on top of the shortened wall like a ropy anaconda. Matthew, to his contrarian delight, knew that the roots were taking their sweet time, slowly and incrementally crushing the walls and bricks into dust.. The only nod to preservation were the series of metal rods that stood inside the open chamber. They reminded Matthew of lead piping that Victorians might’ve used to slowly poison themselves as they turned on faucets.

The urge to crawl into that space hit him. Just like crawling underneath the porch of some summer cabin, he imagined. He could almost smell moist dirt and old pine needles, the kind he used to roll in when his family, on occasion, went up to the Sierras on vacation.

In his excitement, he raised his voice. He wasn’t even conscious of the words coming out of his mouth. Something like let’s explore most likely. He strode right up to the open structure, Carrie in tow. As asinine and juvenile as it seemed, Matthew felt he was in a movie. He wasn’t so carried away as to imagine he was Indiana Jones, but he could pretend he was occupying the same space as that character. Finally, he was going to do something interesting. He put his sandaled foot on the root resting on the low crumbling wall, ready to hoist himself over and into the space.

Carrie’s voice managed to penetrate Matthew’s excitement. Actually, her tone broke through his reverie, that scared tone he always recognized when she thought someone was about to get pissed off at her. Don’t. Aren’t we being disrespectful? Sacred space. A flash of irritation flickered inside him and then died. A tenderness for Carrie washed over him. And he remembered those times when he had brought her out of that cage that made her so timid. The night when she was so angry—perhaps at him or at the world, it really didn’t matter—and he watched her kick in the door of some slick, brand new Prius that was parked on some dark street near her place. She left a sizable dent. He loved recalling her flushed cheeks, the wild shine in her eyes. He had egged her on as if he was the girlfriend who was encouraging her boyfriend to beat the crap out of some poor bastard. She smiled afterwards when she realized no one was going to come out and attack her. A big, wolfish grin. They walked away, hand in hand, without any further incident.

Matthew turned back to face her. He stroked her cheek and brushed the ball of his thumb over her dry lips. Then reminded her of that night.

Today is a beautiful day to die. That’s what they whispered to each other. That was their love song.

Carrie nodded, though the trepidation did not leave her eyes entirely. Matthew took her hand again and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

They half-climbed, half stepped over the crumbling wall. The inside was, surprisingly, dry and dusty. The space, however, was cramped. Matthew could not stand up to his full height and ended up slipping through the bars in a hunched position. Carrie was in front of him, weaving around the bars, plunging deeper into the space with no hesitation.

They reached the darkest corner and, as if on cue, plopped down on the ground. Since entering the complex, Matthew felt happy. The dark corner felt like their secret hideout. Just like sneaking around and hiding underneath the bleachers at his high school. When he was alone he had loved the space. All those metal slats and bars had cut out the rest of world.

Back in their corner, he sat facing Carrie. As his eyesight adjusted to the dim interior, Carries pale face swam out of the darkness. Without thinking, he leaned in and mashed his lips against hers. Like clumsy virgins, they kissed, their tongues slipping over each other. Matthew felt saliva coating his mouth. Everything around them fell away.

Carrie broke it off. Her protests felt like dull thuds, and he only heard bits and parts. Offensive. Insulting the faithful. Arrested.

No fear. He kept interrupting her. We don’t live in fear anymore.

She nodded but he still felt her trepidation. Then she froze.

He twisted around stared out at what seemed like the overly bright morning. A line of monks in the standard orange robes walked by. Eyes trained ahead, they all seemed like they were staring inward. Or completely stoned out their gourds, Matthew thought to himself. They passed through. No one noticed them.

Matthew waited a few minutes. He was patient that way. See? They won’t find us. He could feel Carrie relax her shoulders. Scooting backwards, he propped himself against the crumbling back wall. He listened to Carrie as she crawled over to him. Felt her sort of slide up his left side. He scraped his arm against the wall so he could lift it and wrap it around her as she settled against him.

Tilting his head, Matthew brushed his lips against the top of her scalp inhaling her sweat that lay underneath the shampoo. He let the minutes tick by.

He murmured into her scalp. He wanted to take of picture of her. In all of her glory. He wasn’t surprised to feel her stiffen and feel the shake of her head. He didn’t know why he was so inspired, and he knew that he couldn’t explain it to her. The darkness of the cave, and the paleness of her skin. She would make a beautiful picture.

Matthew detached himself from Carrie. Half crawling over her, he made his way deeper into the cave-like interior. He didn’t respond to her questions. He wanted to surprise her.

He managed to get on his knees before pulling off his shirt. Ignoring Carrie’s exclamations of surprise, which devolved into a plea for him to stop, he continued to disrobe. Lowering his shorts and underwear, Matthew realized he couldn’t pull them off. He had to half kneel, half lay on his side to wiggle out of them With his left thigh and knee rubbing into the hard-packed dirt, he briefly wondered over the possibility of picking up some exotic yet horrible fungus, but he couldn’t stop nor hesitate. No fear. That was what they promised to each other. When he finally kicked off his briefs, he pulled himself up into a crouch. He kept his sandals on. He hoped it would get the right reaction.

It did. Carrie erupted into a fit of giggles. He put on his goofiest smile and tried to shake his hips letting it all waggle back and forth. Her giggles turned into outright laughter. Matthew continued to shake his hips in a bad imitation of a stripper. Calming down, Carrie told him how stupid he looked. What a dumbass he was. With the dim light behind her, Matthew couldn’t see her, but he knew she was grinning.

He stretched out his hand to her and told her he wanted to take a picture of her. She didn’t hesitate this time. She crawled further in. Manoeuvering around each other was tricky. Matthew bumped his cheek against a metal rod, but Carrie managed to snake around him and the bars. He could feel the determination radiating off of her. He never felt so proud of her.

Of course, she disrobed with more grace, shrugging off her blouse and pulling down the straps of her tank top. She left them bunched around her waist, but it didn’t matter. The effect left her bare skin more pronounced. With each hand gripping a metal bar, Carrie stared straight at Matthew, a shy smile peeking out.

Of course, he forgot to pull his phone out of his shorts. A curse burst out of him. His own nakedness didn’t phase him, but his empty hands made him panic. He feared Carrie would pull up her tank top and blouse. Instead, she reached behind her and groped for his shorts. After a few awkward moments, she held out the shiny phone to him.

In his excitement, he forgot the flash. Carrie flinched, drawing back, and they both froze. Waiting for what? The police? He vaguely remembered a list of regulations posted at the entrance. Matthew was about to tell Carrie to put her clothes back on. The seconds seemed to elongate. Too afraid to turn around, Matthew stared at Carrie watching for any reaction or change of expression.

Carrie shrugged, waiting for some cue from Matthew. He raised his phone again, lighting up the dark space with intermittent flashes. Like a time-lapse, he watched Carrie relax in increments, her smile returning. He backed up, still in his crouch, in an attempt to take some longer shots. Then he stood up.

The acolyte was staring at the tourist’s buttocks before he realized what he was staring at, and it took him a few seconds to register the outraged exclamations coming from the two other monks in training. The flashes, though. They seemed to wake him up.

The pale cheeks reminded him, of all things, of those glow in the dark mushrooms that bloomed in the night. He clearly remembered watching the time-lapse photography on his parents’ television screen. He had loved all those BBC nature shows. He felt himself shaking his head. Like a dog shaking off water. He had to guard himself against the drifting, but it was so hard.

By this time, the naked tourist turned his head and noticed the acolyte and his companions. The tall, pale man’s eye’s widened in panic. Before they could reach him, the man half dove, half scrambled further into the dark interior of the crumbling room. The acolyte could hear the man’s voice echo in a pathetic attempt to whisper to his companion, who was shrieking and squawking in horror. A woman. Probably naked as well. As he and his fellow acolytes, two boys barely out of adolescence, reached the lip of crumbling wall, he could barely make out two bodies cowering in the back. He thought of—what were they called?—cockroaches scurrying for the cover of darkness. He was drifting again.

Realizing he was in the middle, he gave the other acolytes a quick side-long glance. The one on his right was already hiking up his robe, ready to climb over. This boy—he had to stop referring both of them as such in the privacy of his mind—no doubt, was prepared to physically haul the two westerners out of the crumbling room…and do what? Hit them? Without shame, he found himself unsurprised for assuming that much. He might have let him go at the western tourists. He was in the middle of considering whether or not to drop everything and head back to Bangkok, his hometown, in defeat before stumbling onto these naked westerners.

The boy on his left called out to the one on his right. A sharp barking order. The acolyte understood that the harshness was not directed at the one on his right, but was simply the barely restrained outrage at the tourists’ offense. The boy on his right restrained himself and stood in a rigid stance, ready to spring at the tourists who were now clothed albeit with mis-buttoned shirts and half-zipped pants. The acolyte was pretty sure the male tourist’s long shorts were perched precariously on his near-nonexistent hips and about to slip down at any moment. The woman had practically glued herself to the man’s back. She had managed to turn down the volume of her weeping. The skin around her eyes had turned puffy and red, making her even more unattractive.

Everyone stood there in a frozen tableau. Everyone seemed to be holding their breaths, waiting for someone to make the first move. Except for the acolyte. All he could feel was a mild irritation, wanting for this whole episode to be over. The same way he had felt when he had to stand in line at his old school or at the grocery store.

The boy on his right said he should speak to the tourists, which made sense since he was the only one who had studied English. Actually, he was pretty sure that he had forgotten most of what he had learned in class, and anyway, he wasn’t even sure that they spoke English. Wasn’t that a bad thing? To assume something like that? The acolyte barely had any sort of command of the local dialect that his companions, local boys, used. Before he could make any move, the boy on his right pulled out the cell from under his robe and proceeded to get in touch with the authorities. Resentment flooded the acolyte’s chest, and the urge to say something sarcastic was almost too unbearable. The words already building pressure behind his teeth.

Well, something opened up and flooded his conscience.

He’s a complete…what did that farang teacher teach me? Rectum-face? A farang something trying poke that farang girlfriend of his Whatever happened to my English teacher? I had assumed she was a virgin. Puffy, round, pale, pale skin, curly red hair. She wore long-sleeved blouses and long skirts. She looked like a Christian missionary. But she taught what she called the dirty words. Something that starts with an f. She emphasized how—it starts with a c—was the filthiest and most hurtful. Though I’ve heard British tourist toss that word about like a bouncing ball.

Asshole. Yes, that’s the word. The asshole’s swinging his head from side to side, trying to figure out who will be least likely to attack. He’s scared. I can smell it on him. But he’s got a clenched jaw, ready to throw his own punches. Of course, he has to settle on me. I probably look too stunned to look threatening. He’s speaking English…that much I can tell, though he’s talking too fast. It’s just a string of noise coming out of his mouth. I only catch a few words. Meant . No disrespect. Just. Let us. Leave. The boys on either side of me are coiled. The one on my right already with raised hand, ready to slap the tourist into silence. Only their newly discovered self-discipline keeps them still. If only I can pretend to be remote like them.

I’m doing it again. I’m drifting while the tourist keeps talking, his spittle landing on my face. What did my true teacher, the old man so brown and leathery that his skin seemed unnaturally elastic, keep telling me. Don’t trust the quiet. It will be your biggest enemy, letting anything into your skull. You need to keep it empty. The one thing that keeps running away from me, that blessed emptiness, no matter how much I chase it. Memories, those are the biggest sin, he told us over and over again. Keep them out of your brain. We were sitting on the floor of a room that looked like a US army relic left to remain standing after that Vietnamese/American war. No, wait. Not just him and me. Several other students. There was that blonde man. The one who kept his long, greasy hair in a bun Teacher’s prized possession. See, teacher would say? Look at him, pointing at the man. He’s blessedly empty. All I could see was a man who looked too glassy-eyed to be in a truly meditative state. I’d always suspected he relied on chemical aids.

I’m doing it again. Distracting myself. Focus on the present. The male tourist has finally shut up. His stare is almost as glassy. He seems to be panting. The boy on my right has taken out his cell and is dialling the police station.

I decide to turn around. Walking away now. From everything. I don’t care. I don’t care. I’m repeating it to myself like it is a mantra that will free me. Of course, saying it and feeling it are two different things. I can’t even pretend to feel exhausted, though something feels like it’s weighing down on my lungs and guts. In my utter failure, shuffling away, I still hear them, and I get a sense that it’s getting physical between the westerners and the boys…

“You want too much.”

I hear my teacher’s voice as if he’s shouting into my ear, and I briefly wonder, without any panic, if I’m going insane.

And I can picture his face. That mixture of compassion and contempt as he looks at me. I’ve never said it out loud, but I want to be a monk. I want to belong. To fit neatly into a group. To know my place.

I’ve never seriously considered what my next life could be. But now I know. I can feel myself squeezed into the emaciated body of a street dog. I can feel myself rooting though a pile of garbage in a desperate search for sustenance. My hunger permanently settled into my stomach, forever twisting it into knots.

Now I know why he had always looked at me that way. I deserve it.

Shame is just as bad as sexual desire. Another thing my teacher would always say. It chains you to this miserable world.

Without being fully aware, I switch faces in my head. I reconstruct that poor naked man’s face. I feel like I’m a forensic scientist, rebuilding the panic shimmering in his eyes, the oily sweat that ran down his pale skin and seemed to collect in his beard. I concentrate on every pore…

I’m still standing on the path. It seems to be late afternoon, and I’m sweating like a tourist who cannot stand the wet heat. No one’s around. Half-twisting around, I check if they are still there behind me. The place is empty.

Empty. Blessedly empty. Don’t question. I refuse to ask how long I had gone down. No, empty. I don’t remember anything. Count that as a blessing. For an unknown period of time I was blessed.

No, I still retain the moments with the naked tourists. I suppose they are in police custody. What about the boys that were with me? Are they at the police station? Back to their studies?

For once, I don’t care.

 

 

Aphrodite came from Caloundra to the funeral. The meditation and peak grief burnt her skin and her seven senses.

The coffin was open for viewing. “They’re in a better place”

She found that a cop out. Almost disrespectful.

Loss for words for some.

Her brother was talking to a couple of women in the gathering. He held himself evenly though his fiancee died. Evenly.

here is where I will stride.

Uraniborg is a hermitage where ghosts, cinematopeia, transits, εἴδωλον at frames per second.

The halls and garrets cozy up combustions. Desire is interminable. Leaves keyless. Heimat is a sweet illusion so proper work is done. The only work is withstandings. Until edifices break. Extracting the teeth in buildings by snapping the earth’s deathmaw shut. By melting walls and streets. Sculpt solid to atmospheric suspension.

Til all floats. Until memories crash only like waves and we embrace entire orbits and sands. Bliss scrambles like aircrafts. I am twenty one years ago. I appear slovenly transcontinent simultaneously. It melts. It cools, it hopes.

Not even faith in chaos, nor intensity, excess, physical overcoming can break revisitation to resolution. The romance is too great without knowledge external to crack old stones.

Cathartic heresies left without measure keeps bumping surface for flagelation. The guilt or grief drowns one. The act of faith is to drown it as we keep tally undissolved.

 

Stride, float, dissolve, strata of diachrony as skygazing