C.R. Dudley

I am somewhere beyond journaling. I am in the thicket, legs twisted, organs rotting. Alive yet, but covered in flies. Perhaps through their regurgitation they protect me from a greater doom that lurks beyond. Scatter me in many pieces of transformed flesh and bone so that I cannot be found easily, so that I become a puzzle to put back together over aeons.

There is no mind here. Spirit faintly. Pure existence mostly. A sense that there is no more and no less. There is no more striving, no more passionate kisses under bridges. No one ever pays attention to the sludge, but it knows the way.

Words torn into syllables and smudged into oblivion by wallpaper paste. Pulp. Make something new. Make a golem of your former self so that you may go on living. Paint over the cracks with an acrylic smile and they’ll never know. Infuse the dying papers with whatever you have left. Become an ornament on grandma’s windowsill where you’ll catch the sun and never collect dust. Or allow the wind to take you into its dance; you are light as a feather.

Fly over that school you once attended, long for home. Float up higher until you see the whole town like it’s only a map. Disconnected, disassociated. Say the words, meaningless now. Then go through the motions like you always do.