Nothing, I Know Of

_Long. Down.Down in a long corridor. Walls. Corrugated. You don't so much as see it, rather you feel it. Undulating zinc. Your eyes adjust - through the slats the light comes in. It's been a long time coming. The space is tight. The chest is tight. Hot. Heat from all sides. Bare feet don't burn so much as... the feeling of the sound when raw, fat meat meets the griddle. On haunches. No plan. Like being constipated. Water. No use crying; because dehydration. Mouth so dry there's no talking. tongue feels stuck to the roof of your mouth. Peanutbutter feeling. Here's a thought  (A parade-of-one ) like a sweet in crinkle paper it opens. Not what you were hoping. Not at all. Not a verse from your grandmother's bible. Not a plot. No. It's a memory of a junkie; the kind that comes with a score. In the inner ear a sighing trumpet. In the chest a brushed drumskin and to the mind's eye (at your own private equator (in the longitudinal fissure)) comes the breathless haemophrodite heroin junkie. "Iqballuvmewooduvdubelledmeupcuppedmescuppedthebottomofeverpennywellbetweenherethereandtimbuktootosavemebuhhecooeduntseeuhwazonthehorsetoolong" You didn't summon her but here she is. Alas. You roll your mind's eye's eyes. She notices. And stops. "Uhstopnow" wait. It's gonna be a long wait. Death takes it's own time. Company would be nice. You want to call her back but. Your tongue feels clamped to the roof of your mouth. You know... it only feels that way. The pharyngeal remembers when the tongue was cut out. There's no words for suddenly losing the taste of the pincers and the minstrel flow of blood and then.

Waking up. The swelling around your remaining eye has a personality of it's own. Nervous. Your moans have a limpness to them. An infuriating light scalds your one empty eye socket. You try blink and you don't and all you can see is a picture of Nia Long where it shouldn't be. That's where and when you resigned yourself. No more words could be said. You came down. Down from the higher mind, with it's endless calculus and settled into your primitive psyche. A grunt. Alone. Nails shorn from your finger beds. Clothed in tatters. Blood latched to your shackles like it was suckling for iron. Peace. Did you capitulate too soon perhaps. Hope will get you killed. Slowly. Give in. Breathe. Suck the air through your crooked molars. So much more air fills the mouth now that the tongue is gone. Things last longer on the inside that way.

You were lost in your thoughts again. You've barely moved. You've been perched on your haunches too long. You fall to your knees and forearms in a pathetic fashion. The dark and silence is apathetic. No passion. No light. Must be night now. You are alone. Not even a junkie would risk this darkness. Be alone. You don't want to be alone. The trick is try to think of nothing. And like magic: You are in the thick of things. Away in a tuffet. Little-Miss-Muffet the milliner wraps her thighs around your head like fresh dressed bandages and you are eating her curds and whey. You obscenely jut out your upper lip trying to make water with your mouth and.

You are back in a zinc box. it hurts so much it almost doesn't. It's becoming norma... No ego. You leak what's left to be leaked. Force yourself into a half-slumped-half-hunched seated position and train your good eye on a non-cardinal corner of the dark where you hope to see the light, should it come, and a vignette of fear draws around your little periscope and death-signal-pupa, ravenous, populate your pupil. it's not like in the fairytales -it'not black - it's white, hot. You feel yourself drowning and your cornea turning to stone. And your mind turns leporous. You fall a-part, b-it by b-it, un-til, on-till... There's nothing left.