The rope is knotted in the corner. Dust on the earthen floor.
It’s been there since the beginning, since that first house was built, since the
first man was made out of spit and semen.
The walls are crumbling around me now, the cracks are growing
wider and deeper, dying so slowly. I’ll stay here forever before they turn to
sand and memory.
My eyes play tricks on me as the candles dance back and forth. Yellow and gold scenes emerge from the walls,
heroes and monsters are born and fade on the flat surface as the wind bursts
though the open windows. The night air smells of sweetness, of smoke and old
knowledge.
That rope, I watch as it changes shape. A snake moves towards me, ready to kiss or
bite. I cannot tell. It slides over my
ankles, crawling slowly up my soot covered legs. I see it grow, I see it expand
wider and wider, forming hips and breast, scales becoming dewy skin and fine
hair. She is silvery, iridescent like
clouds below the moon. She moves. Her chest, feet, hands, all match the rhythm
coming from outside.
They are chanting by the fire, around our old tree on the
other side of the river. I can hear them,
I can imagine them in the shadow of the mountain as if I was there among them.
But I am here, on this simple mattress, among epic battles that never end.
She moves her head towards me. She becomes something more
than physical. More than the force of all men, all systems I’ve ever understood
or heard of. She takes over my body. I search for descriptions, for the limit,
the very edge. I follow, communicating only with my eyes. I watch her breasts
rise and fall, then search her eyes for the center.
She will not let me return to the physical, not yet. Not
while my body is free. I place my mind in her hands, let her wet hands dissolve
my lies. She takes me up the mountain,
one single being in free eager flight.
