THE MOUTH

This place is a mouth. This is all a mouth. Into the mouth all things are gathered, and chewed, and pushed further still into darkness.

There are spots in my lungs now, or have always been, nothing is shrinking, and no longer dying, just me as usual unbalanced on throbbing-numb feet. A mouth I dreamed I didn’t have became instead the world. I gush into the throat to mark my passage from my room to teeth (tongue) to throat to (lung) gut, a mimicry or less of my pathetic insides.

News washes over me as a crashing wave: thunderous but calming, and it happens again and again and soon it is a steady drone and I am vibrating a little.

Pain.

I wish you were here all of my friends, all made of wood. You are solid and grainy and you can be there forever, a tree at the foot of a hospital bed, or simply amble through with positive urgency like the tumbleweed, enough wind to cut your path and levitate my body for a couple days and moments. It will rain sawdust or ashes in the dream which follows because I picture you to be the clouds and the oceans and that’s all there is, and fire. Ease me to sleep; smooth the edges of the jagged ether.