Processing

Gripping buckets of icy water. Toppling a child’s tower of blocks. The fatty flesh around his middle pinched and pressed to the ground. There is a certain amount of splashing. Lungs filled with water. The water alternately brackish and glassy. Not so much an incision as an amputation. Not so much an amputation as a lancing. Not so much a blemish as an abrasion. Blood collecting beneath the skin.

A grapefruit or a lemon, squeezed until there is only pulp. What they call a bark, an empty boat, knocking against the shore. The mud hard and dry. Finally, the parachute does agree to open. The tang squeezing your cheeks. The rush watering the eyes. The sole sweeping the floor for splinters.

A thin robe made of linen. A gas jet spurting flame from the mouth of a charred dragon. Perhaps a roar. Perhaps a soft swishing. Again, the bare foot whisks the cracking floor. A theft. The sound of vellum scraping vellum. Bare legs splintering, and the sun clotting like custard in the sclera.

Please tell someone that this is not a waste of time. Spiders’ legs. A cardboard box. It could even be scrawled. The shadow of a sparrow on scattered twigs.