Almost five years ago, my body began to vanish. I was stretched on my bones some skin and flashes of this and that, mostly an emergency. Now there are mounds of me; piles and folds with no more flashes but streaks and spots. It's a portrait of a wet dog with sandy fur. It's a half of a thought that keeps me from really getting things done now. As if that is different. I stopped drinking beer so there might be less of me. I drink beer so there will be less of me. There is clearly a problem there. There just keeps being more of me, my crowds of inner children, my night time hunger, the strangers I can be. I didn't sit down to say things about myself really. I was thinking about storage spaces and the piles of stuffed boxes that smell of damp evenings and dusty dining rooms, tables for scrabble, slender tan leather shoes, disfigured chiffon and heels worn from street dirt in the rain. I am yawning, swallowing stuff. Stuff hemmed into more and more of me as I become massive and retreating and surrender. Hoist my flag upside-down, a haunted ship cemented into a tourist harbor. A broken TV with only the sound, not synced to an endless shifting of constructed color and blighted memories, they solarize and warp and stutter, ravaged by the time passing over and over and over, twin rivers running forward and running backward. I hoist my belly in the crook of my arm, vestiges of it's usefulness coming into focus and darting into the foggy obscurity of daydreaming and I crawl inside the picture of myself on spindle legs, blasted in sunlight when I thought I might go out, just like a light. A bright flash and the trace of rose geranium, a dream trying to consider itself.
