Golden Glow and Green Velvet

Time slows in moments and reinvigorates in others, racing and running and feeling wind upon cheeks. Eyes watering from the air pressure and a tear suspended in air, parallel to the ground. A rush in the brain as blood returns, and sense. Wrapped in a cable while the white glow of the TV is orange and gold and green velvet that I kiss and keep close to my lips until it scratch, and I don’t even open the book anymore to see what kind of thing could have ever hidden inside of it.

A red eye on the side of a turned-over tree watches me walk past, trying to ignore it. An iron-barred hemisphere contains myself and my child and my wife, and from a distance we look like some sort of mask and a woman’s face without nose or lips. It speaks, and I do not understand what it wants to say.

What captain is so strong and wise as to be in charge of this broken vessel? Wooden planks crack and rot and soak with sea water empty of salt and only just maybe barely enough to keep us afloat, bobbing down the river.

I have not been to Eden, but I have eaten the fruit found on the ground beneath the 24-hour pharmacy window. Tell me what I want to hear, and I will never leave.

I am a golden knight with a firm handshake and a sword that breaks every other sword. I cannot go back to the seer who sent me on this journey because his eyes left a long, long time ago, and though I used them to guide me, I have strayed one too many times. He will not abide that, and I don’t blame him. Who am I to say what’s right?

I am a knight of the open sea and my sword is a wave covered fork that pierces shimmering fish flesh, full of oils and proteins. I eat good and long until I am full of everything Ocean can give—its salt and secrets—and I don’t give it back. I spit it into a bottle beside my bed to drink each night I want to feel a bit stronger. It makes no difference to me what you do with it when I’m gone because it don’t work like it used to. Keep it for all I care, or give it back to Ocean.

I am electric and incorporeal and glimmering amber. My fingers do not need to move to touch and take and grab and hold and feel their way from your soles to your lips to your mouth down your gullet where I will melt in your primordial silver bile.