Author: nezua

SHEPADOH. Hearken to the chime, the salt, grinding tongue on lime, the rapping of the knuckles for the fifteenth time. We enter the chamber. We keep getting higher. And quieter. And finer.

Soft motes of light, something between sand and dust. Atoms of inspiration, branching outward. Trees for thighs, and a heartbeat that starts fires. I sing the love apoplectic, swallow night air like it’s nectar. I balance and fly. I soar in real time. I’ve got your song in my soul, and a grip like tripwire.

BORNE ALOFT ON A SEA OF ILLUSION, I JOURNEY THROUGH TIME. The cabin walls are thin and as I lie awake, the smashing fizz of a million tiny termites etches layered incantation into the blackness of midnight. I can hear everything, but am I listening to the right conversation?

Distortion is an ever present force, the way that gravity itself challenges every movement. It wears on you, distracts you, encircles you, drains you, tugs at you, begs you, batters you, and tells you all the while you are on the right track. You have to know better, and you have to learn before the cost is too severe. These currents might suck you down into a world devoid of light, and feel nothing about it. Would inertia apologize for a train crash? Would a water moccasin feel shame for stopping your blood?

This is not to say we are doomed, only that we are living in a destructive artificiality, a glittering psychic wasteland crystallized from the blood of our great-great-grandparents. The true story will rise in your mind like welts on a burned palm. But you must become still and pure of heart to see the scars.

I smell smoke again. We had a few days of blessed relief. The skies are blue, the air smells—smelled—of nothing more than rain and petrichor. No more little boys in masks on bicycles under a flat, gray, post-apocalyptic light. No more sweaty, boxed-in evenings without a hint of wind. But it seems that break is over, if the sharp tang in this morning’s air is any indication. The flames are always speaking, even if they’ve hushed their voices.

It is a terrible and foul gale that blows, all around this shelter you must build. Even as a dazzling sun kisses your forehead, you must breathe poisoned wind to stay alive. It will make you ill. Insistent hands of wind nudge you down a hill for water, only to snatch at your outstretched arms, hoping to drag you under the rank mud and fold it over your squirming body. Sages sail forth on towering currents of wind, whispering knowledge in your ear. It is always on you to know the worth of their gifts. Precious gems? Fake stones? Toxic salts in the shape of crystals? The most insidious of betrayers long ago lost the ability to tell the difference, and are earnestly trying to enrich you as they poison your plate.

There ain’t no easy way out, whispers the pop star prisoner, brandishing a sharpened, iron fork in the dim light of glowing algae. I follow him to the edge of the defiant forest but by now he has succumbed to the echoes. I step past his body, over the thorns that circle the deep woods, and into the long, soft, grass. I am still walking when the dawn breaks. A soft lavender light dusts the ground. I am almost home.

I have safely smuggled myself to freedom, and without forgetting my true tongue. I have been using it all the while, high above the stunted and deceptive words they taught me. Not many in this place listen for octaves, and assume I am pointing at gulls.