And you?
I ask one passerby, pocked cheeks and his forehead covered in round tight protuberances.
In the dark(I finally understand this)Kadman and these pustules were always me. If a passerby stops, he might understand(the faces of the passersby the faces of my past)if he or she or any other would stop, I would know if I could understand.
Excuse me.
Wait.
Do I want your picture taken? Protuberances and all?
I raise my camera to shoot, but he turns his back and waves me off. None of them bursting, my pathology still adhering.
So, you still have not escaped the claws of your past, your habits? -- I talk to myself, my condensed volume increasing.
Locked in a jar.
I do not answer myself(how shall I even try?)Wary.
The tricks of interior voices.
A picture? -- My jar booms.
Picture of what? -- Another passes by.
A picture of my terrain. Uneasy from the cliff, another mewl edges me close.
My scream is somewhere in this city!žI screech at another passerby, pale skin sweating underneath the sun.
He seems to hesitate, takes a more circuitous route, covers his face with a newspaper in passing. Not one stops. I lay supine, the leaves rumoring in the windless afternoon, feeling the dry earth amongst my fingers. Turning into dust. Moved by the crowd toward its greatest density, attempting to force myself out of their snatch, feeling their breathing between my shoulder blades.
Sephira is suddenly sitting at some bench near the parks' edge. She removes her widebrimmed straw hat(no hair my God no hair)The top of her head flat. I look at her placid pendulous breasts and the knowledge that her genitalia is just from without my view(covered)because I am ambivalent for it.
No. No.
Fill me*Her eyes empty and look past mežCan you fill me?
I pry for the direction I came(or an approximation)to twist out of the street's pull, trying to leave her nearly extended genitalia falling away in the horizon, remembering the details of her rounded belly.
Fill me.
I cannot push through the crowd to sever the dialogue(only drawn deeper)Forced westward by their bantering. Waiting for her genitals tittering before my visual space.
Smell...Smelling the air full of bodies, soil, shit and faint grass cuttings.
Her eyes all I am capable of seeing, their darkness preceding like unlit space. Sparrows call precipitously. Watching them struggle against larger pigeons for bits of food, the sun falling in squares geometrically covering the ground, the sparrows' whistles reaching a shiver upwards from my spine.
I open my fist like a pigeon's eyeblink. She is already no longer in the park.
You didn't fill our eyes. We need to begin filling our eyes. We are not empty, but our eyes are not full -- She said before she had left. I carefully touch my closed lids(afraid I will poke one out)I remember the relief of my mother`s milk(or a vague fullness after a drink)Lulling visionless dream. It is the same. I do not worry I may be wrong.
It is the same.
This passage is an excerpt from Arc: Cleavage of Ghosts by Noam Mor. To purchase this book, click:
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