the eyeballs burn.

the eyeballs burn and the knuckles are dry and cracking

the left eyeball aches as it burns- it feels as though someone forgot to shut it.  Shut it

Shut the door

Shut the damn door!

Shut the goddamn door!

Shit!

 

Shhh… Close your eyes.

Close your eyes baby and relax.  Relax and think happy thoughts.  Relax.

You’re breathing hard.  Relax baby.

Relax.

Light a cigarette in your mind and inhale deeply.  Feel the rush as the blood and adrenaline overwhelm the noise.  As  your head tilts back and you let go, surrender to this moment of sheer abandon.

No, no – don’t try to fight it.  Just breathe.

Breathe and relax.

There you go.

There.

There baby.

There you go.

go on now.

it’s that way.

that’s right- that way.

Go on.  one foot after another.  go on.

you’ll be fine.                     i’m right beside you, watching you.                 right.

beside.

you.

Ahhhh… fuck it!

Somewhere up ahead is an ancient cracked blue door.  It has an ammonia-exposed blue patina that is peeling and cracking.  It is peeling and cracking and it is shut.  It has been shut forever and everyone on this path must go to it and try it.  The path is white and the surrounds are white, brilliantly, blindingly white.  They burn the eyes until all there is the blue cracked door, standing by itself, without a frame, impossibly shut and impossible locked, blocking an indiscernible way.

Things are bright and you move toward the door.  You are the only one moving and you may have been the only one moving forever.  Your foot takes a step and  instantly a march plays loudly – the tinny brass seems to echo off of the blinding white.

You take another step and know that you must reach the door.  Something behind you is driving you and you are afraid.  You are afraid of being frozen, of slowing down, of slowing down  to a pace that cannot keep up with the passage of life.  And as you fear, so it goes.  It is as though you continue to move toward the door but are getting farther away, and the events of your past begin to come alongside of you.  Your head turns and your burning eyes widen as you look over at yourself from a moment before, equally red-eyed looking back at you before it goes by, and in turn is passed by a you from before it, and so on and on.  And you are able to see your infinite past selves pass each other and stretch out horizontally away from you and your mind races after them, faster and faster, racing toward the baby you, the infant you, the foetal you, the embryonic you, and then, it begins again… you begin to slow, and in slowing you realize that the moment of your conception is infinitely distant.  you will never get there because you cannot move fast enough.  There is no amount of speed that will take you there, not even though you were to accelerate exponentially.  And although you are indeed moving faster, it is the same as not moving at all.

And so, you think, it’s okay.

I will wait.

I will relax.

I will breathe.

And as I do these things I suspect that someday, I  and the blue door will come to know each other.

I suspect we already do.