Hallway Cynosure
Whenever I try
to put words to the delusion that permanently changed my perception of time, I
see the space at the top of the stairs of the Dundas Street apartment in
between the kitchen and JB’s bedroom door. Dusty corners: cat fur, clouds of
fallen hair. Woodgrain? A railing. Weeks later I will break a
friend-of-a-friend’s nose as he braces himself on that railing, threatens
violence and refuses to leave.
Chatoyant
I say delusion
not because it wasn’t real but because I was too willing to lift myself from
our mutual system of reality. My mind saw what now means. I contained my past, present and future self, existing
simultaneously. I was complete. I had access to all of my timeline. Imagine a
core sample drilled from the earth, gorgeous marbled cylinder. Except it was
flat like the moon. And like the moon, not edgeless. The space between rungs of
my crib where I kick away from the wall. The storm sewer at the end of my
childhood street, the slightly larger opening after the seventh bar through
which I squeeze to catch salamanders and crush leeches with rocks. The lovers
one night or forever all the same to me. A piercing through of elations, a bed
of nails. Successes yet to come. I saw the suicide on the far edge fated for
me; I was myself, old, doing it. This flattening set me plainly on the level of
my destiny. So I did what heartbreak programmed me to do three years before.
Little Woman
Death, I
learned the next morning in St. Mike’s emerg, is ugly even in quarter doses. My
pale scalp and hairline and the tracks of my beach-blonde extensions turned
black. My cuticles and under my nails too. Mouth and teeth and lip
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