october 6th

we were there, sitting at my table in the dark, half-talking-half-whispering in soft and soothing voices, untying the knots from ourselves. we were both dirty, the shower had broken days ago. it was better that way i think. it made me feel more real and alive, like daphne, growing bark and leaves and gradually becoming part of the earth. i was comfortable but couldn’t look at you, so i fixed my gaze on the wine. it looked thick and black in the dark. i pretended to watch the tannins slide down the curvature of the glass but i couldn't really see them. there wasn't enough light. every sound was being recorded so we could remember, even the silence, which to us seemed to be the most important. our silent soundtrack, simultaneously recording and playing, over and over.

i sensed something. what was happening? i was calm but uneasy, something felt different. you could sense it too. i rummaged through my head and tried to remember what i had learned in school, something in neuroscience or endocrinology...or philosophy? physics? something about the non-linear, dynamical systems of emotion and human response, cause and effect...maybe i didn't learn this in school, maybe in a dream? energy…no, frequencies...yes, that was it! the soundtrack, the dark, your chemical emissions, the tiny hairs on my arms that stood on end and wavered with the draft, the distance between us, the rhythm and echoes of our voices, the shape and structure of the room and the walls. like an orchestra, it was all coming together and something strange was happening. a force was being synthesized, i could feel it gathering and salivating, readying itself. but for what? i started visualizing all the elements as numbers and symbols, aligning them, mathematizing them. there was an equation...oh, what was it? i learned it once in that dream...

suddenly my body seized as the muscle and skin turned stone. now i could almost remember what it was capable of, this force…i held the numbers in my mind and calculated faster, i had to know. then the noise came, snaps, the hardened flesh was breaking. as the pieces of myself shifted and detached, i stopped equating and began trying to mentally will myself whole. it wasn't working, i was distracted, tobacco kisses. i couldn’t stop it now. the bones fragmented and disunified leaving my botched skeleton held together loosely by only the sinews and veins. you held me up and smiled, my marionette body draped over your arm. drunk wine started to leak from my skin at the cracks. it looked a little like blood, but i wasn't bleeding which surprised me; i thought falling apart would be a bit messier. i thought it would hurt. it didn't.