I’m a gallery of broken dreams. I am unhinged cupboards, cracked tiles, and fitzing lights. He and I are kerosene fires and crashing oceans, beating up the shoreline. We are soft sheets with morning light and squealing tea kettles, ready for the day. Ready for the battle that they call living. He is a Mercator projection, en progression. He is the stuffed rabbit, Edward Tulane, lost over the side of a cruise ship, about to seek adventure. I am the unwritten journal, the stacks of rejection letters, and the ever busy typewriter. We are the affluent bilingual tourists- the language of ourselves and the language of one another- built upon the affections of love. You are a gallery of moved mountains, torn down plaster, and a broken heart. Your heart was stitched up with crude utensils- floss and a dirty needle. It is not healing now, it is infected and black feathers are flaring off strangers’ backs. You are a gallery that never quite made it to The Louvre. To die unremembered. Isn’t that the real fear? The nightmare that we will be forgotten and buried inside of civilization and mounds of dirt. That god won’t write your name on the Book of Life- forget you. Forget you and forget your mother and your lover, your daughters and your sisters. Pull your head off of the pavement, you are burning brighter than the sun. He and I are stardust. We are spanning out and firing up, nuclear. We are all nuclear, waiting to be fired up.
Nuclear Galleries
by Taylor Williams
13