it is not a question of memory [alfie; day six]

i run water over fear
a descant for recollection
a slow drip down this nose, lips, chin
down through the shoal of impulse

I am convinced that I exist in a vacuum full of memories reoccurring with slight alterations. I swing, strike hard, step back to admire the view.

This is all it takes for the creature to spring to life, slashing forward at an alarmingly quick pace until one of his blades has made contact with my own skin. The pain is sharp, needle-like, a projection of violence upon flesh that does not feel as devastating as the the gift from the girl the previous day.

What stands in front of me now is a war much more dangerous than that of the day prior. This is a battle of mechanics— of surveying the gap between emotion and program and deciding who is better off here.

He has never left this place he calls home / I do not know if I have ever had one.

My spear has clattered to the floor, and my remaining hand has come to rest beside it. It is not the site of this that causes my head to spin, but the sight of blood drowning out the remaining specks of hope that traversed my body.

The blood that has poured from my wound has, quite literally, drained me of the morning sunrise.

With this in mind panic begins to rise in my throat— I want to call out for Ansel or Daniela, praying that one of them would sweep aside the barriers of wheat around us to finish the job.

They have always been more than I could ever be; they have always kindled the fire while I have only collected the materials. Their tongues never caught in their throats in the face of danger, and I am here, kneeling in the dirt and choking on my own tears.

A cannon sounds.

In mind I believe it may not be signaling the death of another— I believe it is simply the precursor to my own, the affirmation of my own doubts and the signal that my time has run out.

I am only as good as the people I surround myself with.

Alone, I am but the boy who hid under his staircase; the boy reading books by the moonlight and wondering why alone was all he had.

Why those nights were nothing more than foreshadowing to this— to finally dying in body to match the mind that has existed in the same all along.

I am still kneeling, and so I lean forward to maneuver the spear into the crook of my left elbow with a still living stump of flesh. Pain shoots up my shoulder and I begin to bite my lip, trying to let it fall to the wayside until I can bring myself to both feet.

When I arrive, blood trickles from the corner of my mouth

And my left arm

And my right.

The creature in front of me may be a monster all crafted mechanics and stitching, but I am not far behind.

i'll flux into history
but first let me fuse language,
anguish, touch-- give me time
to settle with what anchors shade to this face

[ dars ]

i run water over fear
a descant for recollection
a slow drip down this nose, lips, chin
down through the shoal of impulse

Hope here is but a fickle thing.

One can flux in and out of it or the belief of such, but there is no certainty at any point that this is indeed the realm in which one exists. I would like to commit myself to the idea that now I am entering into hope— into the notion that existence will be easier from this point on, but this is not something I can convince myself of as the creature charges forward once more.

Even with pain slight in comparison, my body burns— dry kindling set alight by the smallest spark.

I feel obligated to apologies; choking on a noose crafted of one loose promise too many. Regret drips from the tip of my tongue— the last drops of water in the desert, the last words of love on the lips of a man who know he will not return home.

There were no promises made between my mother and I when she had obliged herself to the doorway of the justice building. She had not crossed the threshold, and I had not desired for her to. She loved me because she had played a roll in my existence; she did not love me for the boy born from thoughts that existed only later.

Perhaps this was the most frightening aspect of it all— I am threatened with returning to an existence that only loves the rudimentary pieces of me my body my being.

I was never able to introspect on this when we had lived in such close quarters, for I was more concerned with the space between those four walls that contained us than what was contained within ourselves. I wanted more for her than I could give because I felt indebted to her— bring me into this world and I will spend the rest of my life trying to repay the debt.

If I die now, I do not know what will happen to the last pieces of loose change in my pocket— I want them buried with me.

I will be counting pennies and dimes until I can no longer see straight, watching seconds turn into minutes and months in the grave until I have finally accumulated the wealth I have desired. I want to be the richest dead man that ever did live and then some. I want to be everything different than I am here, now.

Unlike my mother, there is no threshold that I will not cross, and perhaps it is this that has made her unafraid to separate our senses of being.

i'll flux into history
but first let me fuse language,
anguish, touch-- give me time
to settle with what anchors shade to this face

[ dars ]

i run water over fear
a descant for recollection
a slow drip down this nose, lips, chin
down through the shoal of impulse

There is little left of me that I would recognize if I was forced to stand trial with my reflection.

I could not testify against that battered thing; I could not find enough of a reason to excuse my crimes against it.

All there is left to do is bury it, burn it, continue to disfigure it until it can no longer be recognized as Alfie Larson.

My spear has gone wide and left me stumbling forward in the dirt after it. I am on hands and knees, looking up at a creature that does not and will not know who I am. I am looking at every fear I have ever had— every uncertain moment of doubt and depression personified.

This is what it looks like to be killed by your own hand without committing suicide.

I can feel my throat begin to tighten as I scramble to get a hold of my spear once more. Between bringing myself to two feet and nestling my spear back into the crook of my elbow, I have given the creature ample time to strike at me once more.

He does not hesitate to take the opportunity present to him, and his blade slices deep into the flesh of my bicep. There is nothing left of me that has not been touched by dirt, blood, or unsharpened blade. I have long desired my body to be something different from what it once was, but this— this is something even I could not have imagined. My ribs now prominent; my lips cracked; my tongue lost for what it once would have said.

In every way I am no longer myself, and I wonder if this is the point at which people are supposed to no longer fear death. For if the body does not match the mind then what identity is truly at stake? Alfie Larson is somewhere back in the alleys of District Twelve, sleeping on street corners and making sure his mother locks the front door.

Here, there is a boy running along with bloody feet and a barren heart.

The only thing that reflects in sort of similarity is a lost sense of misguided purpose.

Perhaps this is where I lay down the spear; perhaps this is where I tell whatever god is out there that it is time for me to come home.

i'll flux into history
but first let me fuse language,
anguish, touch-- give me time
to settle with what anchors shade to this face

[ dars ]

i run water over fear
a descant for recollection
a slow drip down this nose, lips, chin
down through the shoal of impulse

(“Alfie, if you could be anything— anything— what would it be?”

“Why does it matter?”

“It just does. It tells me who you really are.”

“If that is the case, I do not know that it is in your best interest for me to answer.”)

I thought that there was one point in time during which I was love.

We were sixteen, and neither of us knew much of anything about the other. We were sixteen and desperate; sixteen and looking for approval anywhere outside of our own bodies. I was sixteen and he was everything I had never known I wanted. He was sixteen and everything I did not know I did not need.

His voice was softer than my own— a task in and of itself— and he always spoke in sentences that seemed to come straight from the lyrics of my favorite song. I think he talked just because he knew I liked the sound of his voice; I think he lost his voice for me.

I think I lost myself when he left and forgot to look under the bed for the pieces of me I hid there when he would come over.

Under the sheets now are lingering threads of us, of nights spent gentle and pressed together. There is the place for which I now long, here, on cold ground covered in blood and regret.

I am eighteen and about to die; he is eighteen and may not even know of my predicament.

He will be nineteen, and he will fall in love with someone else that is not me. He will be nineteen and he will perhaps visit my grave and wonder what my name would have sounded like intertwined with his. Or perhaps he will be nineteen and take his next lover to the place where my coffin lies— tell him that this, this was the boy with glass ribs and a shrapnel tongue. He’d tell him that I spoke soft enough to not draw attention to the blade in my palm; he’d tell him I was nothing more than a place to rest for weary travelers.

Stay long enough to find new life; do not stay long enough to make yourself at home.

He was sixteen, and I loved him for who he was; I was sixteen, and he loved me because he knew what he could do with me.

I am eighteen, and knowing this now, I am ready to let him live alone.

i'll flux into history
but first let me fuse language,
anguish, touch-- give me time
to settle with what anchors shade to this face

[ dars ]