lysanias BY PAIGE CRAWLEY Setting: Between two columns. In a public square, at the temple steps. Between two dopaminergic neurons. In a cave somewhere lies some sort of plant, some coarse but reassuring bloom of green and – maybe red, some orange. A deep dark avernus feeds it, waters it in lolling, rolling laps up shallow banks. The roots push through black, pebbly sand with persistent ease. I wake up in the mornings and open my eyes to painful light, painful darkness when my eyelids fall tic tic shut – so I creep off obscure axes into life as some wild, half-mad creature. My fingers are clawed, grasping around little, tiny, easy things I haven’t quite found yet.
flesh is drawn to sweet the way flesh is drawn to death that bit of flesh that rests between my empty, searching ears
I pour relish down my throat like air, like divers sick on nitrogen and fear. I flush myself with plenty, space, restraint. I wish I loved the taste of perseverance – it is never long on my tongue before my stomach draws it down. Spits. It’s a quick-twitch muscle, it’s a quick-twitch, twitching itch I’ve cobbled up from numb bits in my ear canals and sharp aches in my knees. By which I mean, I mean – Gone.
My conscious life is a series of empty, flipping frames: “I spent an era soaking my spondyl-olis-the-sis in NSAIDs.” 28