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Post-coitus(2001)
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I
He woke up into life with a heart attack. All things began from a complete standstill, as is never the case. The gradual acceleration of the fluids in his body accompanied a thousand years of lightening and darkening tempests upon the wall, which, viewed from such a great distance as his eyes, appeared blue. As his body became known to him, he felt the corporeal lack of his mother; he could not imagine her face gilded by golden hanging hair as it had once enshrouded him even in his greatest tribulations. His bald head scraped uneasily at the rustic sheets he had thrown on the bed before his slumber, an act he now could not recall in the slightest. Across from him, he began to make out an immense redwood frame, carved and detailed with the finest craftsmanship into intricate strands and curls of grain. The foreign style of the frame’s design led him to assume it must be extremely old, and the high polish of its contained glass intimated the unseen presence of a dedicated caretaker.
II
Her tear-soaked eyelashes blinked from behind her shielding bangs, the four limbs of a starfish protruding from the shadow of its rocky home, with skin reddened from ages of violent currents. She had collapsed beside these tidal pools and now autumn leaves refracted a dark red light on her bruised yet vibrant skin. Where forest meets ocean, her narcolepsy had defeated her. The brackish taste in her mouth led her to wonder if she had cried so much harder than she remembered, yet upon feeling the wet sand between her toes and the barnacles on her belly, she realized that she had slept undisturbed through countless subsuming tides. Her dreams were still visible in the aquamarine pools scattered before her, and as she stared into them, she longed for all the places she had seen to wash over her again.
III
Red inhales blue. Blue exhales red. The Crystal Surface can only display or obscure, never record nor replay. It had been grown, not formed, and so It cannot be shattered.
IV
His arms were tied to his sides. Doctors shuffled through his room in their musky leather coats constantly taking his temperature and reading him letters. He was unaware of their presence; he could only listen, with the fraction of attention he had not fixed upon the obscure images within the frame across from his bed, to the muddled sounds entering through the window of the festivities passing by on the street below. Her hair had grown so long that it was difficult for her to keep it out of her mouth and eyes. She lifted her head and excitement filled her throat as she heard the sounds of the celebration of St. ------’s holiday coming from the streets of her town not so far past the wall of redwoods that strangled the beach. As sleep left her without a trace, she skipped down the overgrown path, pausing only to pull with some effort a strand of her hair from the roof of her mouth, wet with saliva.
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