The Nameless Man

Volume One: XXIV - XXXVII

XXIV.

Doctors who smoke, he knows them. They are closest to death. Soldiers smoke. They are closer to death. No prognosis.

He cannot translate the meaning of wrinkles. Of old age. No questions. Always questions.

He lays in the meadow. He rolls in the grass. No itch. He thinks about Plato. About Aristotle. The differences.

The grass encircles his ribs. Holds its face between soiled talons. He looks into the sun. On his back. Directly into the fire. He sinks lower. The sky brightens.

The grass burns in fragrant waves. Snakes pass through leaves. Wading through pillows on the forest.

He springs to his feet. Something he has to do. Somewhere he has to go. He sculpts his hands. He molds them until light resigns under the hill.

Completely different. The candles. Substances of recollections. A past. Forms of forms. He burns them into soil. Buries the remains. Only he remembers the location. The crease in the grass. The burial of ideas.

XXV.

The Tower of Babylon. He sits in the kitchen. An empty bowl full of gardenias. He wishes. He washes dishes. Birds flock upstairs. For seeds. For predictable luck.

The heavy stilts of Sed. A day long gone. Long gone.

The heat coats his ankles. Sweat under his jeans.

Breakfast eaten upstairs. Sed paces. A brace braces his legs. Makes the strokes predictable. He crumbles the seat of existence. Particles. Mere drops of history. The globe is squeezable. An exercise. A pause. A rest. A color swatch flares. T.V. black and white. Blue and red. Puzzle pieces and a magnifying glass. Pictures he discovers anew. Landscapes of cardboard pasts.

Tan and White enter. Waves of hope. Related in unrelated in mind. Years provide relief.

Skulls on the bathroom floor. Daffodils. Gardenias stretch through eye sockets. A swatch of green.

Sed has no memory. Fatigue. A bitter exercise. Vague recollection of seaglass he blows into the wind.

He returns favor in thoughts that will outlast Sed. The revolver that lifts off shots. A pulse. A rhythm. A fighting destination.

A straight line. The quickest route. Simple mathematics. Simple chemistry. Simple to refuse but not to accept.

XXVI.

There is an ocean somewhere. Waves spill when cymbals hit. His back faces the window. Reflection through the blinds. Close to the tile.

Sed's bones are rocks. In the morning they settle in a field. They become vapor.

The table is the same. Same day. Back broken in a hundred pockets.

He sips coffee. Another form of sweat. Self-reliance. Hands drip the mug. Loose. Tight. Transfer of certainty between fingers. Between pressures.

Upstairs. Sed's tree-trunk footsteps. Silent turn through history. Through pages of loose-leaf. Long gone.

Sed forgets cardboard. Water sprays his body. Morning ritual with chatter. Voices that question the events.

"Are you alright in there?" A ghost asks.

"I'm fine," Sed says but means to say no. No now. No when no began as a response to despair. No tomorrow when a gaspless breath does not reverberate in a room.

XXVII.

A voyage unzipping the past. He understands the difference for her. Her body lives through years of ease. Desire. Self-control. Selflessness.