The mind expands.
“Confused? Of course I’m confused.”
“I will be there.”
“I won’t be there.”
“Which will it be [there] then?”
“I can no longer accept the terms of the agreement.”
“Your commitment to change is impressive, Mr. Goldman.”
“William’s report breaks the law in three places: here, here and here.”
“There is a two point deduction for late papers.”
“Spring falls like fall springs like…”
“Remember: no quizzes in April!”
“Showers, showers, showers,
water, showers, showers.”
“The hands of the clock strike twelve.”
“… and it never stopped raining.”
“The air is clear and blue.”
“Streams of flowers formed hair.”
“The air is clear and blue and
I
love
you.”
“Sexless eyes bleed carbon monoxide.”
“Please forget you ever had me. Mom, please forget me.”
“I want to believe that this is the right thing. That I’m here now and I was somewhere else, now I’m here, with the cigarette smokers and their ideas, and the room is black like nowhere else. I want to believe I am a human being. I want to believe I have human feelings. Someone talks to me, I talk to them. This exchange of words means something I don’t know. The feeling is vague. (I disappear in the air; later, I materialize.) I think it has to do with emotions. Emotions, not words, fill the spaces between humans. Good, bad, good and bad. Euphoria, despair, euphoria, despair.
There is a humming in the back here. People are dying in this country. The air sends planes. The water sends ships. The land sends soldiers. Each element kills, each element destroys. My friends get blown up everyday. If you think there’s a purpose, there isn’t one. They work their lives at clothes shops, shoe shops, ice cream shops thinking about money and girls and kicks and the clock turns to zero and suddenly they have no lives. Nobody tells them you’re going to die today and never say goodbye to your family or friends but all for good reason, this is the reason.
The humming—it’s from a bomb. The room we’re in, black like nowhere else, doors sealed shut, I feel general trepidation, a trembling of knees. The humming is in the back somewhere, here, here, closer, closer, closer… a red beating heart. Time is blood. In the shadow, Bill tries telling me about the report but seems listless, aloof, as if anticipating the blood of time spilling, disintegrating, the life of his existence obliterated forever in fire and smoke and black ashes. Pulsating. Pulsating. The heart vibrates. Bill’s report will be seen as a great achievement, a milestone in analytical research. In dying, in greeting death with open arms, he will become a voice stronger than any his living body could offer."
“Her crystalline body breaks on the surface.”
“There was no explanation.”
“Have you seen my glasses? They keep… disappearing.”
“Pieces of her everywhere.
Everywhere.
Everywhere.”
“There was no whole.”
“Tell me what to feel now. I need a signpost.”
“If ever the report existed, if ever Bill was a real person, it wouldn’t have saved him.”
“Because they brainwash you. They feed you lies from the television screen.”
“She walked into the sun.”
The mind decays.
“The bomb blew up at half-past eight. I killed myself at quarter-past nine. They found thirty-eight bodies in the room, countless more charred remains. Terrorist involvement was suspected. I turned the TV off when the principal came on. I didn’t want her face to be the last thing I saw. I’d rather see nothing. So I didn’t see anything, I just walked to the tall dormitory, whistled, sang, waited for somebody to let me in, took the elevator to the roof, smiled, waved, and jumped off.”
