Hermes

UNC as in if I weren’t as tall as the buildings.

A plastic wave was thrashing back and forth in front of me, behind the rock, and I watched the drops rising, growing wings. They flew, and never came back.
This, they had told me; this was the way this sea got smaller.
The water never returns.
Never.

But the sun does.
The sun. Same sun on the rise and fall, same sun in the night.
There’s no moon here, only sun.

The kind of sun that doesn’t burn and doesn’t blind; just makes you see
everything you wouldn’t want to
and that is enough.

Taking the dust from the rooftops on my fingers, I turned and went inside the city inside a building insidethetunnelinside.

It’s dark here, look.

My eyes unused to the darkness this place brought with it.
Untrained and weak, they blink rapidly, trying to dilate their pupils.

I hear noise from an engine, cogs, something like that.
I get closer, go deeper – I’m starting to see, you know.

The dust: so thick on my fingertips it formed a line.
Line showing the way back, just like the thread of a well-known maiden.

No matter…dust…irrelevant. Seemingly.

So I move on, and I see big cogs.

From left to right:
pitch-black to blinding light.
immobile to incredibly fast.
big gears to microscopic detail.

For some reason-
for some odd reason-
I start dragging the last grains of dust from left
to right
on the cogs.

I feel the burn on my fingers but I don’t stop.

The blood starts spattering towards every
directionmyfingersdisappearandbecomewetshavingsoffleshandbonesbutIstill
still
still
insist until my bone becomes a well-forged sword, a big needle.
A thorn.

I stick my head between the luminous cogs.
And inside I find myself.

I finally find myself.

My face goes away with skull and nose and tongue and teeth
but I make it.

Just in time, I stab this sword into my heart-
And the cogs stop-
I fall back
and my head cracks beautifully
pouring out ideas that will find their way back home