The night idles. A mellifluous harmony between soft gusts of wind and colluding leaves makes everything pensive. Even hiccuping engines flow rather than castigate. Why the sense of danger, then? What is this thing that is upon me? It looks like death but death's not its name. Though it shares the same property of eternal suspension, death is not its name and what is this thing upon me? What is this thing like death but not that always courts me while I, reluctant lover, court by rote, dragging my soul behind me like a sack filled with food that never rots, Sisyphean chore, bloodying feet that heal only to bleed again, what is this thing upon me that is not death though death will vanquish its power? what is this thing that is upon me, incorruptible, mute, blind, stoic, carrying the sickly sweet smell of decaying pomegranate? Don't say dasein or yahweh. Say it's personal and intended. But what is this thing that is upon me that is not death but like it that gags and nourishes in bewildering equilibrium and has no name though I call it, nightly, with all the futile bleating of rage and love wrought from quartered dreams no longer as strong as once though somehow stronger still, what is this thing that is upon me?
A page once brisk with creation, made limp by rain, grown brittle by sun, palsied now by wind, balances on the edge of the squat green plastic table to my right. While I transfer it to the floor on my left, I am stultified, unblemished, unfed, never hungry, summarized as the last smile to be had, wondering when it was I first lied, and why.
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