THE OTHER, A PULSE:

Four walls and one with a door. Four walls and a flex of glass, two panes uncovering the flailing strains of light. A ceiling holding itself up. Above him, the peck and turn of rafters, raining down in particles and dust, in swimming winds. His face, the stone and capture of a universe built on rags and timbers. The trailing of fingers through rows, staffs and lines, seeding. Sow and reap and the rest, willingly on.

The rocking chair was his mother’s, his grandmother’s, his great grandmother’s. Bleating with its curved legs the trim and gauze of stars, the lullaby. His mother’s, his grandmother’s, his great grandmother’s, their collective hands holding his forehead, a static blaze underneath and unhidden. His eyes the trim and gauze of stars.

And those hands, crusted in earth, turning the verses as pages, the roots and rhythms. The book his father’s, his grandfather’s, his great grandfather’s. The steady bleed of them, his father, his grandfather, his great grandfather, falling into unsteady rungs. The pages roaming through in dribbling breezes, turning towards themselves, overlapping and obscured in the lack of everything now.

And the Other. Not a father’s, a mother’s, et cetera. Not one of these but only itself, himself. Only vented from himself, skinned from his skin and not hollowly or ever passed down. The Other, moving crookedly on stairs, pacing the time of his soles, the exchange of him for another, this Other. The Other bleating bleeding the shivers of unease, draining into and out of him.

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