The Persistence of Forgetfulness

Douglas sat at the end of the table, rubbing his hands on the polished mahogany surface. He sighed. He checked the time again, just to make sure. The sun was coming down, splitting light through the cracks of the blinds, reflecting brilliantly off the table. A man walked in, looking down, avoiding eye contact with Douglas, and sat down quickly at the other end of the table. A silence ensued as the two waited for another couple of minutes.

ants crawling

When Douglas got out and was back on the street, he took a wrong turn and ended up at an unfamiliar intersection. He looked back towards where he came from, but saw only the vague semblance of a sidewalk that looked like any other. A woman bumped into him walking by. His feet shifted restlessly as his eyes wandered about—the signs were bent and distorted, the colors subdued.

how time melts

Out of breath, he scrambled into the nearest store. He bent down, grabbing his knees and panting furiously. He held there for a few seconds before falling, hitting his head on the tiled floor. A gasp followed the thud. He lay there, mangled next to the counter. Someone put a hand on his shoulder, gently, and slowly got him on his back. Yes. Yes. He died. His mouth dangling open, hair roughed up and arms limp, caressed in the arms of a stranger.

a hot desert

He was left ceiling gazing. The fan turned into the sun, endlessly rising and setting. Stars appeared—little jewels that disappeared when he turned twenty and moved into the city—when the burning balls of gas were replaced by the magic of electricity, hanging day and night. Douglas felt like he was floating. Like his body was willing him to a slow, morbid dance. His eyes closed. He imagined his house in front of him, burning silently—perhaps just a small crackle, like a calm fireplace during the winter at his grandparents’ house; but none of the roar of destruction. What expectations there were in these lonely moments; no brilliant lights, no love. Just the immediate empathy of a quivering faceless individual, huddled to the sound of air conditioning. Seized up by this anticlimax—Douglas, remember?—a childhood summer, playing with his dog; his father’s laugh; a vacation to Europe—but no. None of that. He was left lying there, thinking about the pain in the back of his head. Is this it? Maybe I can get up. The door is only—

a dried feeble branch

Linger

I’m still here. It’s been too long. When I lift my arm, it shakes. Something feels strange. Last week—I was here too—when I heard voices—

Here I am. The rug is against my cheeks, smelling of something sour. The soft, underlying texture, encrusted with a layer of something tainted. One, two, three. When I stand up, everything seems so far away. Numerous tangent lines, jutting out from the ends of furniture pieces and streaks of light.

The ceiling above is gone—right now it is night, but the sky looks reddish, rusty. I’d been talking to someone on the phone for a while, having lost track of time, and when I hung up I felt immensely tired, and awful, each breath holding the weight of the rest of my life.

Listen closely. There are voices behind the walls. Any wall. It inches closer to you when you look. Don’t look. Just listen. Feel the whispers of lost sentences crawl up your spine. Keep your eyes fixed on something on the floor, or else the walls will close in on you. And then you will become one of those voices.

The world is full of noises. I am at a street corner, waiting for the light to turn. A child no older than ten, ignorant of the rushing cars, steps out into the street. Then a screech—a shout(?)—and mumbling; syllables, fragments, ticks and ums. I do not see any of this, but the gurgling—it lingers.

Even in the Isles of the Blessed—when the spirits dream, they too yell and scream in defiance. “Forgive me, forgive me!” In the piles of wretched, pure sweat. Some angels would have to come and hush the poor tortured souls back to tranquility, before they float back amidst the delicately strung stars and luscious gardens.

This is happening. The constant reminding—how you tell me again and again, the woes that wait, the pain that persists, the voices that remain. This has happened before. A shadows casts before our eyes, and we quiver.

When the fighting first began, we didn’t think that death would be so close. It was always a matter of distance. Hundreds, thousands of miles away, with nameless people who were of no relation to me. Until I could hear the blasts from outside my apartment, the whole thing seemed like a story: a series of events told to me through a pane of light, shone through the thin fabric of processed words and images. And then there was the rattle of the windows, the piercing of the wind, the raspy breaths, the flood of vicious blood that swam beneath the soles of my feet as I hid from the darkness, in the darkness. From then on, the voices wouldn’t stop.

Life—death—the cycle of pain. We go round and round, fleeing from the warped circle, crawling away. Uprooting the weeds, round and round and—but hush, the crackling fire continues. The dark sky enveloping everything. All things said, nothing done, nothing left but the haunted reverberation of first words and last breaths.

In terms of how things felt, I could never say. Afterwards, when people asked me, I would say that I was scared—terrified, even, quaking under the oppressive force of wanting to live, wanting to live for nothing, and then wanting to die, but afraid of the pain of dying, wishing the pain would go away and leave, like the sun setting, just to dim and sink under the horizon. Like a leaf, caught by the autumn wind, carried gently onto a bed of sweet grass. I was afraid. That’s how I knew I was still alive. How I lingered, my nails dug deep into the soil. My hands dirtied, for the sake of what? More fear? More pain?

There is a dream that is common: you wake up in your bed, and get up as usual. But in the middle of your routine, something happens. You can’t tell what it is, other than that it is strange, out of the ordinary, and very, very real. You walk back to your bed, to see yourself still sleeping, covered by the sheets, eyes closed. Then you rush to a mirror and look—what do you see? There’s nothing, of course. Nothing special, nothing spectacular. You are still there. You are still here. Wake up, you think. This is just a dream. You try pinching yourself, but there is no pain. You try screaming, but the sound is hollow and mute. You are free. You are awake. And you drift away, away from all the familiar places, flying farther and farther, until the world is but a tiny dot in the ocean of void.

I can’t breathe. The world is against me. Leave my purple face where it is. Let whatever happens,

happen.

There’s a place I remember going as a child—it’s a big room, with beige walls, high ceilings, and large windows. There’s an older woman there, maybe in her fifties or so, wearing a lavender dress. She comes up to me and asks if I want to play. I nod enthusiastically—and how she laughs, throws her head back and gives me her hand. Her hand is warm. We go outside, where it’s partly cloudy, and the flowers are dancing. The sky explodes and limbs fall, splattering blood everywhere. Accelerated shrieks zoom past me, shot through the air. Birds drop from the sky like snowflakes, feathers scattering all over the ground, cloaking the stained surface with a thin bed of grimness. We lie down, cast our eyes away. All the breathing stops, our lungs collapse, our minds atrophy, spinning out, circling around the hole in our hearts.

Beyond. Beyond the mountain. Beyond the great, central mountain. Of the universe. You. Me. A fallen forest. Uprooted by the poison soil, the shock of the impact. Where the earth gathers. Where the heavens collect at night. Into a shining beam. Beaming down. Lifting up. Cracking the stones. Blistering the rivers.

Behold the fragments—the last bits of sanity. What lingers in between. In the spaces. In the wretched voicelessness splitting the sour muttering. This is. This is where we choose to come, until the stars dim. Until the echoes sink into great forms, into us, and we have become mere echoes: repeating, repeating, tongues, numb, repeating, never, ending, always, always, repeating, reaping, repeating.

Finally, a sunlit room. The warmth of afternoon, spreading across the shimmering hardwood floor. “Some tea?” I nod. My eyes turn to you. My dear, is this what heaven is like? And oh, how you laughed at that. You laughed so brilliantly, naturally. It echoed through the entire hall, radiating, and I could only laugh with you. Then you stopped. Your eyes were on the verge of tears. You stared deep into me, pupils full of pain. My stomach dropped and my throat choked up. It was quiet. The windows sparkled.

The Importance of Rain

Sometimes it rained: no one could really hear it

But it was dark outside, and no one wanted to go outside—

So they stayed in the house and played cards around a small table,

Lit by a dim, orange light that flickered and hissed.

One of them got up and went to the bathroom without saying anything—

Just got up, and left. The others did not say a word, but only

Looked up briefly, and then back down again.

The one who left did not come back, but went to a room and wept.

But no one else could hear the weeping against the hissing of the lamp.

The game went on and on, as long as the rain kept raining,

And the weeping kept weeping, and those who continued playing

Continued to do so—and they did, so the game could never end.

Sometimes it did not rain, and they would stand outside and watch

The clouds move like ships, or turtles, or fleets of rocks,

Shifting in the immovable pane of air; Blowing to and from

Somewhere else. They watched and never blinked,

Keeping their shriveled eyes on the whiteness, and occasional greyness,

And tried to reach at it with their hands.

They mouthed words like, “come,” or “here,” and sometimes “please.”

Please, please, yes, and the things that they watched would shake

And disappear, and they would weep silently for their useless,

Hopeless desires. It would now begin to rain again, usually,

Unless the sun dropped, and the world would then freeze,

And all the trees would become rigid, and fall,

As the world would grow rigid, and fall;

So they would become alive, and fall.

But if it did rain, then the earth would shake terribly,

And some god would emerge from the soil and cry out, “Ah, ah

Ah, ah,” and make the flowers spring up and dance a spring dance;

Infectious as it was, so that they would join in, hands held in a circle,

In rhythm with the beating of the rainfall and the burning liveliness

Of the ground. Rumbling, teasing,

Sifting the sand and mud, pumping out gold and souls—

Necks whipped back and hair electrified up—Until thunder came,

And the life was scattered and they fell silent and ran,

Like when a predator appears, and then the world would start to burn,

Lovingly, ensnared by the whirlwind of fire and water as one,

Joined by the air and the earth—so they dispersed

Into the farthest corners and yelped in bizarreness.

The storm then calmed when the same god came forth,

And said something no one understood, and the world held still.

So they came back out together and built something

Great and wonderful, something that no longer exists,

But something we still dream in all our dreams, if we dream.

Around the Fire

We told strange stories around the fire,

As the smoke rose, touching stars, forming

A veil upon our eyes—

The words dancing

The moon burning

We grabbed smoldering embers in our bare hands—

Laughed while our fingers blackened,

Bones exposed,

Listening to the night explain its meaning.

We waited millions of years, as the sun came up and down

Innumerable times—

How the ants crawled all the same,

And the trees too, standing still,

still.

But the pain remains, as endless tears

Could not dampen the fire—

Nor could the most wistful tales cure our aches;

So we sit—telling, singing—crying—

Whisper to me these secrets now,

Those that beg to know,

The ones that solace comes to late at night,

When everyone’s asleep—in a half-dream,

And the creatures walk out and hiss and whistle,

Speaking in tongues and bizarre languages:

And I understand—everything…

And that is when my legs fail me

In my ailment, age, and quiet tenderness

So we hold hands, dear, darling, mother, father, brother, sister,

In a ring that we wear

With honor and with pity—

Rubbing our burnt hands together,

Forever, and ever.

How strange everything has become…

The soil toiled and dark with envy and wear,

Toughened by our wrinkled feet, fleeting roots—

I think we’d float now, and go.

Wander up the sky, the heavenly ladders,

Arms spread, accepting, our lives yielded.

But I fall, as do we all.

And we wait, as does our foul fate.

And we sing around this fire to the Earth’s lyre,

Until we tire.