The Dream of Perpetual Motion, Athena Schlereth

The Dream of Perpetual Motion

We are in a fantasy. We are uneasy because we can never recognize when this is true. But we do not recognize our discomfort for what it is. We believe it to be a mere case of indigestion. we are in the tunnel we are hearing the music of gunfire outside; on the downbeat we know that there is dying there is suffering we do nothing we are stuck. oh we would have married you won’t you tell us what’s going on we’ve got cricks in our backs and we wouldn’t dare to walk in all this black oil while you tease us with rhythms we can’t decipher don’t you dare let us die here who lit that match it must’ve been you now the flames become flesh become energy the tar drains away and we have left. A lilting symphony in its first movement comforts us, and we safely perch ourselves on the highest note, watching the music below us rise and set. With the stars cascading in a fugue, like the snow in a Russian winter, we are buoyant and pure. We can see in forty-two dimensions and we comprehend the function of each. We know why we must only live awake in four dimensions, why our bodies would thrash and then shrivel because we were not born for five. We play patty-cake with the long hand of the clock and its Mother Time keeps us in line. We do not hear a voice but we are listening. And we learn what we already knew. No being created all those inert rocks and noncorporeal stars. So logical, so systematic and decisive. How sterile the suns are. How meaningless it would be to create such things. But there is a limit between the fragmented atoms in the rock dust, analyzed to its quarks. Where the soulless comes infinitely close to the animate but never intersects. What makes up the gap between atoms and cells? We seek to understand the rift between dust and sentience. This is what we call God.

36 Pillars of Salt

The pinprick of our lovers’ illicit gaze on our tobacco stained hearts, the ginger root and whiskey voice of a certain human who can’t stop haunting you hunting you and the vestige of a memory you cherish so much that you’ve changed what really happened. And we can see it. We want you to see how we are who we are because we know you can understand. We want you to understand us. We will walk from you until we cannot remember. This is the genesis of our time. Home should be like this. We awaken with only a faint remembrance of the murmuring galaxy and gray dust on our faces.

Athena Schlereth ’14

Pillars of Salt 37