praying hands;
The memories always start with a fading entry, color waning under the sweep of moonlight. Tonight, they live to stay. He does not welcome them. They walk through his door and walls, his windows calling for silent shattering. They do not bid him greetings, and instead bare their teeth. He thinks it’s enough of a substitution. He stays still.
                He counts.
                        One, two, three.
Memories become plagues. Thoughts become incisors.
His mind is a vulture that he’s fed with his bare hands.
It grew: there’s none to blame but his fingers and their thirst for chaos, nurturing it under the sides of their nails. It grew: the last thing that he would see is the truth, and the rest is a grand illusion crafted with the mechanism that helps him cope.
        (Maybe it’s a lie, the mechanism. But what isn’t?)
He closes his eyes to unsee the ceiling. This is the representation of a lie.
It is easy. He imagines that the collection of bones lying still so close to him is a product of abandonment. There was a war that he couldn’t see; a war that sent boys to the doorsteps of brutalities made men. There was a war that he couldn’t see; only the remainders of it, presenting themselves in the marrow of skeletons scattered on the wasteland. Sometimes, he feels it in his own structure. After all, nobody escapes the aftermath of the cruel universal design.
He asks himself: if there is a God, why did the devotees manifest themselves in the dreams of killing machines?
He can still feel it against his knees, the prie-dieu that pressed too hard against the caps of a child. He can still taste it against his lips, the prayers that he read and copied, meanings diluted by the polluting lies. The list goes on: the rosary beads, the stale air, the cited verses. Plays them as a unity in a loop.
The discordance stops when he opens his eyes. Or at least, it learns to play in the background, in hushed whispers that he’s learned to subdue.
It is silent. He needs a distraction before his thoughts carve more bullet wounds in his flesh. It is warmer outside the blanket, soles padding against the floor in a deliberate rhythm. The halls are too empty after years of walking in aisles of fear. He wonders if his memories have magnified themselves into something more latent.
Dawn is numbing the horizon; he thinks of an early getaway. Rummages through his pockets to remember that he doesn’t bring his cigarettes and lighter, only his wishbone.
He’d like to think of it as enough. But alone, it is silent. He returns to the confines of walls to locate movements, and here he is, fingers curled around the wrist of an unfortunate woman. A smile paints his lips, almost genuine, almost deluding. He slips lies into his voice (and calls it a coping mechanism). “Let’s go to the beach.”
