Gaps, patches and in-betweens

Millions of tiny, damp footsteps on a stampede coming towards me,  slipping through holes in the tin roof.  The w aterfall is in my room. I watch the uneven shower gather into a puddle and decide to creep toward my mattress, bed sheet, and blanket. I listen as my body lies on sponge. It is louder at night, like full-on stereo surround sound. But that's only because the world at night is dark, where everything seems more...intense and in slow motion. My tiny room seems caught in a photograph, frozen l ike a suspended moment in the movies, like receiving bad news. Only time moves and the damp spot of water soaking the mattress some more. The downpour is constant, hypnotic. When it changes tempo, it is only changing its direction.  I remain in my sponge. The sky and sea can only gather so much water. The winds howl around in confusion. The footsteps are no longer tiny but of giants slipping on the roof. The sky is angrier with pent-up heat, stoked b...

I find myself standing in the middle of the road, facing a barrier of mahogany trees. To my left is a welcoming blanket of small yellow leaves on the ground, waiting for the others to fall from the tree.  To my right, I see two paths: one covered in green wild grass taller than I am, and the other, a dead end.  Above are thin brushstrokes against a canvas so blue that, for a moment, I think I hear waves. The colors of reality scream at me as if I've lived in black and white, muted dreams all along—until t he scent stings my nostrils, like everything we put on our bodies to mask our humanity, expelled all at once by a blob that was holding it all in for forty-two  years. The smell of leaves, freshly cut grass and sunlight on hair and skin burns.  I see red: bright, enveloping, causing me to palpitate in fear of the living. "I am an X in an indeterminate equation. And that X is the rock upon which I stand." - Mario Puzo