Inchoate

Spider webs catch our eye like so many flies, and we think of silk and thread. We think of the makings of our places of respite. Beds are secure, warm, and inviting. The spider lives in this spindly makeup: it’s more home to her than it is a trap. But sometimes in the forgotten corners of your bathroom there lies only the tatters of the web that once was. And eight lanky legs curled upward to meet in a pyramid transport me. I see sweat soaked sheets, sallow skin, and eyes sunken, deep-set to where you can’t place the light in them. And I’m sorry.

I’m skipping rocks hwen Fenris asks me as to hwy I’ve got a green guy croaking away up on top of my gourd. 

Thwip thwip thwip : the stone’s got Christ in it, more than Fenris that’s for sure. 

“Cool to the touch on a hot summer’s evenin’.” My head’s clean all ‘round: no hair and with the little fella’s cold blood and all. I expect he ‘preciates the steamed sweat I’m working up. ‘Sides mom always had them towels with the frog in the name, hwat that stayed slimy and cool to your skin the day long. Figure them old folks liable to have just used the frogs they self. 

‘Course Fenris is chewin’ me out about the whole deal. Disease or some such. I take the critter down with both hands and look him in his void eyes. I massage his crater cheeks. I tickle his yellow tummy. Kids done used to call me a ‘yellah bellah’, the toothless monsters. Admirin’ this guy, I think it doesn’t seem like too bad a thing to be. An American Bull. Well that’s one thing Fenris ain’t never gonna be. HA!

I meander in my ‘old pal’s direction and hwip my amphibian friend straight across his overbearin’ face, leavin’ speckles of mud and froggy slime down his forehead and the rest. You’d think that with Prince’s gunk (I named the frog mid-slap) that Fenris ought to close his mouth before this or that could seep in. But he just ogles there, all agape and lettin’ the drips fall and pool together. He seems stunned.

Anyhow, I replace my crown and I’m on my way. 

A wretched, vampiric weed clutches the throat of the beautiful flower and squeezes until ichor drips to a pool underneath — flora on flora violence: another proper juicing. Meanwhile the insects of the garden floor – ants and beetles of all shapes, sizes, and cultures – sup upon this fount with full hearts believing it to be Gaea’s honest provision. And from on high, in the earth mother’s stead ambles downhill a conniving shrew to swallow up the lot of them. Mr. Shrew glances at the friend-weed and performs a sweeping bow. He immediately dies. 

&

Sarah flits her eyes back and forth simulating a blur. The eastern wind flings dust, leaves and all manner of particles in a cloud. She thinks maybe if she follows along with enough speed she’ll capture the entire moment down to the component atom. She dizzies herself to a daze, thinking ‘maybe now’, ‘almost there’, and the like. Her peculiar quest to grasp a small infinitude by speeding up her perception of a single instant enough to slow it down to observable parts … why doesn’t she just film it? Sarah’s eyes glaze over and she’s focused on something on the ground. ‘Ew gross’ she says, then ‘I’ll be back tomorrow.’ 

A wretched crimson gash streaked across the sky as far as was visible to me. It was rich enough in color that I traced visions in its hues. I saw the crucifix, long and tall and fed into a wood chipper. The shards spewed forth, filling an endless walkway dug out of a golden floor. I saw the Nazarene tugging at the hem of the Patriarch’s cloak, pleading liberation over reprisal. I saw the First One swat his child away. And I followed the sneer to his eyes and out into the distance.  Judas Iscariot, trembling and filled with terror took step after step along the infinite thoroughfare – each contact with the fractured pieces cutting fresh openings into his flesh. I saw his feet shredded to blood and pulp. I saw him drag on and drop fleshy chunks and drip puddles and I realized in horror the veritable origin of that crimson streak. 

I turned to my compatriot: “Watchu reckon that means?”

And in turn she produced a silver coin from her pocket, tossing it skyward. “Heads or tails?”

I scratch my head and spiders skitter out, my mind rendered bare and exposed by that timeless blunt force object. And cobwebs drenched in cranial fluid remind me of the friendships that held me together before I ended up drooling into the stones beneath me like this. Neuron to neuron: a good pal electrifies. The secret they don’t tell you is that lightning can’t be captured in a bottle, but it can be captured in a physical vessel if you plunge an iron rod of ample enough length through a person’s exposed cerebral cortex right down to the medulla oblongata.  So I convulse to the song of storms. So I dance to the tune of the sky’s will, now that mine is gone. So here among the stones I am drooling, desiccated, and yearning for a time when sparks crackled in our irises – reflections of recognizing one another’s humanity.

Cold winds scrape up flesh re-scarred and scraped again where the vacant stomach lies exposed. Chained to a once flying carpet which is in turn latched to the mountain’s side, with the carpet’s belly exposed save for the anthropomorphic form that shells it. A crow perched on a head of grayed hair plucks another clump of wet, dripping ocular nerve from the socket – its distended gut then hangs further down and around – covering the whole top of the silhouetted figure’s head and face. Soon the crow will be unable to snatch its most dear pleasure. In ecstasy, the crow gobbles yet more, the nerve regrown slightly past the place where he severed it last. The figure shivers. They are used to the crow, and will miss him when he starves, without flight to escape this perch or mobility to claim more of the figure’s sight. The agony of the crow is constant and familiar. But this cold: it is new and frightening.

Red fruits adorn brown, twisted branches – trees I thought would lack the fruit bearing capacity given their advanced age.  I kept snagging my heels on stray creeping twigs and spiny sticks. Nick, cut, scrape. Seemed the entire afternoon. Why Justin insisted on living in these depths was beyond me.

Black soot stains the underfoot of the brown boot. Wisps of smoke linger around the ankles. Harsh winds blow against tough denim stretched by legs brimming with muscle. The two seem to scrape one another into a shrill whistle. Each gust takes away particles in chunks until there isn’t a trace left of the ash. Calloused fingers wrapped in a leather glove flick away the matchstick. I can’t stop myself. 

from the Journal of Katerina

February 21st, 1885

Hallowed halls hollowed out by North winds bound for peaks I didn’t know and you didn’t know, won’t know. So I guess it’s we that won’t know. Stray crucifixes and Seraphim feathers litter the pulpit and decorate the pews. Hellfire and sunflame light candles sconced in every nook. What are these cold gusts to a warmth eternal? Leaked, dripped, fused into every floorboard. In this place the stark decor leaves space for the crisscrossing threads of our lives to find one another. This is hearth, haven, refuge. The gaps in my heart eke out into you and yours, hesitant then sure.