THE OTHER, A BIRTHING:

A breath, breathed, with him inhaling the sickly pockets of himself. No air left in the room, even with the storms running through, his body scattered in a bed dredging bile. The careless now world of him. A fragile broken breaking. An invisible unbecoming.

His mouth flapped a dangling lace. He spit and gripped it, pulled, ripping the thin muscles in his arms. A thick exhalation and the tread of a boot, its black canvas ankle. So that out of his mouth came the Other. Ridged with formica and dripping sweat, barely breathable before, inside his insides.

And near his bed it stood, staring into the darkness of his eyes in the pitch of the room. The walls pressing. The wind in choral slices of air. And this Other, watching him watch him, himself and the Other, watching each other.

He had breathed out a boot, night colored laces and metal flourishes. Ankle high, threads crossed arm over arm, pinned to the edges, lashing. A boot bottom up to shadow legs, a waist gleaming in colorlessness. The rainbow antithesis. A spooning tankard of asphalt, paving his stare.

Prone on a mattress, he dreamt of dreaming, dreamed of dreams. And instead watched growling black dislodge itself in borders and trips. The unmasked Other. Standing facing him now, no longer inside his insides. An Other looking into his spaces, the deft heavy swing of tracing lines, veils that had structured him. The Other, composing himself as his bearer breathed. Gasps of no air for the first time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Click here for J.A. Tyler's bio

Read "The Other, a Cloud of Feathers" by J.A. Tyler

Read "The Other, a Pulse" by J.A. Tyler