dream deep

There are noises in this place that sound like freight-trains off-duty, waiting patiently in stations and lying in pieces in great factories where they cast iron. There are smells on the floor and in the air above my head, blue and sulfurous and lingering like the dream of a dream of a dream. There are so many pieces of paper on the ground scattered and arranged and held with tips of so many fingers, like dust on a window ledge in a windowless room, or a house made of windows in a world without the sun.

There is something light about the quality of walking in a place like this: your toes naturally step heavier and lighter and more deliberately: it is like maps, or the railway tracks these freight-train darlings follow. Not unlike dancing, although trains do not dance. And shadows, shadows, shadows everywhere. Shadows at the turn of my head and nestled on the tip of my tongue, uncomfortably but permanently so. Shadows in the dip and fall of the smile and the unsmile and the Hello, how do you do today? Thank you. You are most welcome. Oh, not at all. Would you like a complete and full tour of the grounds and its surrounding areas? Oh no, I’m terribly sorry, I have a train to catch and I’m not coming back anytime soon. Well, goodbye then.

My dear, the games we play at are childish and boorish and this is not fun anymore. Your face is dying, your deliberate and impervious fool-face. Perhaps it is already dead. Your sins and your silences are yours alone to have and hold. No part of them is mine. And these children in their youngness and curiosity, with their sharp teeth and sharper faces (cut around the edge with clay knives from river-beds that are white and perfect) are hoary and bent angle-wise and darksome like the old, old people we will one day be. I will leave you to it, my darling:  I am only passing through.