From Marcel’s point of view on his bed a teapot had become a dark monstrosity; a single dying candle was flickering and playing off of the teapot’s coarse surfaces. When Marcel let his head down onto his pillow his neck remained stiff so that he could quickly sit up or move to reassess the candle that was hidden behind the teapot. The dancing corona that was produced from behind the teapot was the reason he couldn’t lay still for long.

“Papa?”

Papa’s blood was pooling on the dirt floor of the house Marcel was lying in; Marcel didn’t seem to comprehend the significance of Papa’s motionless body or the glassy red mirror that framed his corpse. There was no significance to comprehend. Sometimes, depending upon the variable candle-light, Marcel could see the back and underside of Papa’s ear by staring at the reflective blood surrounding Papa’s head.

Marcel laid his own head down again, this time he relaxed his neck momentarily. His eyelids slid down across his eyes but the moment of their closing was a reminder that he needed to keep them open.  Marcel jerked his head up off of his pillow. He looked around again and found himself paranoid of the room’s many shadows: a teapot projected its evil twin onto the wall near Marcel’s Papa, a wooden chair produced captivating bars that trapped Marcel on his bed and caused his eyes to refocus for every couple of inches that shifted. It was beautiful really, the room. Textures and forms were known for their light and shade and weren’t there otherwise.

Fire: flies and flows

Through branches and windows

And all those places that it goes.

.

Summer slips into,

Slipping summer’s

Old fates and foreknews

Slipping off sandy shoes.

.

Darkness brushes blue and you

bask in sandy heavens.

Sinking soft and slow through

Something, something new.

.

Bodies and seats will,

Dissolve, they meet somewhere still.

Where thoughts think thoughtless,

People melt on night’s windowsill.

“Oh god… god it hurts”

“Where? where does it hurt?”

The sailor gasped and writhed on the dock, water trickled off of his newly purchased raincoat and fell through the cracks between the rotted boards. The onlooker’s focus shifted momentarily away from the panicked sailor himself and fixated on the captivating movement of the water-droplets following random paths from the sailor’s clothing down into the sea below.

The onlooker’s distraction was checked by the sailor’s wretched scream.

“Do something!” The sailor sobbed and hyperventilated between his words. Every message he wanted so desperately heard was segmented into parts by quick, sharp, panicked inhales. “Fuck…” “I- don’- t – want to- die!” Some of the sailor’s tears followed their own paths to the ocean, some of them stuck around on the countours of his face and mustache to witness his dying moments. “I can’t die! no! he-lp!”

The onlooker felt mostly upset by this violent scene, but somewhere deep inside he was annoyed that the sailor kept moving and kicking and crying: this erratic behavior altered the otherwise smooth flow of the water droplets down the sailor’s prostrate body and sometimes even made the onlooker lose track of the droplets that he was chasing with his gaze.

“I- have. never- been. too good-. at breathing out.”

The sailor exhaled.

The onlooker didn’t hear him, he only watched the now smooth and undisturbed trickles. It began to rain.