You cant know

You cant know how this situation will redirect me. You are responsible. Whatever the outcome your guilt is sealed in the vapour that perpetuates my life. You have nothing to do. Let this moment free into the reflective moisture of my breath, the fine clear crystals of the sand endlessly flickering between cause and effect. Let yourself be lost in the sun. It will all happen whatever you do. The sky is half white atmosphere and half luminous white cloud from end to end of the beach. You squint across the sand. You dont work to see the way the sky changes. I get up to leave. You have not changed position. It is up to me.

The day is a long morning, waiting to start. Things are hidden around the city, notes to yourself, bits of food, beds, clothes, tragedies. They are attractors. Not each on its own but the mess of them. You couldnt be drawn to a specific thing. You have no needs. The sky is swollen with a single cloud. It contains the sun. The cloud is viscous benign smoke. A breeze emerges from down the beach and pulls the hair from your face across your chest and is still. Where the sea horizon meets the beach at the edge of the city a black soft edge of sky blends into the water. It grows. You dont see it rising filling half of the sky. A cold wind filled with sand and bits of soft paper fills the beach. Where crests of sand were scribed by wavelets fine sand is let loose into the air. It drifts against your arms and chest and crackles in your teeth. The beach is smooth and the sky is bright and black. You dont wonder. Everything is apparent. Things dont cause other things. Everything is, but separate. Everything has an edge that at different times pretends different things. It can open up with a diaphanous imitation of inclusiveness, but the things that float into the tentative midst are themselves closed and tired, unaware. You are conscious only that you end.

You wonder about rolling over onto your back. The sea has receded. There are no in between positions, no engagements. You are a series of pairs. You and the sea, the sand, you and me, the darkness, the dimness, you and you, dreamy afterbirth, you are passed from station to station, each one you and an action, you walking, you prostrated, you dozing, you stealing, you longing, you forgetting. The sun shines hot in the white bulb of morning. You walk across the sand. Your feet are hard and borrowed. You dont feel them. Who does. You feel the heat from the sand rising beneath your dress. Your stockings sweat and sweat between the stockings slowly seeps and rolls back to the sand. The entire sky is black and simple for a moment. A thin rain falls. You feet kick the sand away from the asphalt and steam rocks from side to side as the streets are slaked. You walk and stop. The rain falls on your hair. Oily water traces down your neck and between your shoulderblades. It should irritate you. It stops there on your back and you feel it with all of your skin.

At the end of the road the rain hangs in a pale curtain where the edge of the sky opens onto the desert. When you stop under a tree you feel its bark. Nothing. It is damp. Your fingers are damp. The road doesnt end in this direction. That doesnt mean anything, then there is the desert where days are nurtured in the emptiness. You should want to lay down in the cradle of hot rocks and sandy fire. You have nothing to turn yourself into. The notes on paper are yours, you hide them in your pockets. Your nests are washed away at night. Things are ruined. Then morning more and more things back up against the storm sewers. The refuse is yours. Everything is left behind. The road keeps going. All that will be yours is the walking.


Critical Response:

« | »