Fallings

Article Contributed by Anonymous (not verified) | Published on Tuesday, June 6, 2006

I can only distinguish the months by the he that he has become.  Now, he is an actor who plays a bartender at night and has replaced the mid-town businessman who reminded me of my father.

 

     It is 4am I am sound asleep dreaming of personalities that take form in other bodies.  In front of me there is a young girl that looks like a child I taught how to ski in Colorado, but she is not her- she is my mother and I am telling her how much I fear losing my hair but she can't hear me over the television show my brother (who looks nothing like himself) is watching – she keeps asking me to repeat myself and I keep forgetting what I've said and say something different though I know its not what I've said before nor what I want to convey.

 

At the same time he is in a poorly light bar with blue plastic chairs that swivel and large wooden statues hanging on the wall as if on a pirate ship or the insides of a miniature golf course at the New Jersey shore.  He is touching girls' arms, asking them to repeat their drink order – everything is getting darker and darker.

 

     In the middle of a dream, my roommate gets up to go to the bathroom.  I know this because my mind has switched and I am now in the basement of a ship.  It is old and sterile, everything is metal and I'm having trouble locating the stairs that will bring me up to the top deck.  I find a man who is sitting in a corner looking at his hands.  I tell him about all the times I've tried to deny I had a body but he isn't following and I begin to feel the ship is sinking.

 

     In the morning around 8am, all of this reverses.  He is now at home in the basement of a two family house, one that shuts out the sun and smells of urine.  He is rolling, falling under the blankets to avoid the light that I am walking through on the way to the subway.  For days it goes on like this – both of us in and out of different conciseness's, different frequencies – two days existing as polar opposites, forming a negative when placed against each other; his white body against my dark sky; my dark hands falling though his white buildings.

 

     I enter the subway tunnel, no more together then I was above ground.  The train comes and I try to figure out how to contort my body to fit into this vassal.  I imagine unscrewing my limbs, holding them as carry on luggage and venture though the closing doors just before my hair gets caught. 

     When I emerge on the other side of the tunnel, he flips over – realizes the opening in the blacked out window that sends a streak of light across his eyes.  He swings an arm to fix the cut in the curtain and I disappear.

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