In the church basement, plain cardboard boxes,
all brown, had been stacked on top of one another,
creating a precarious wall that divided the room.
On one side of this wall was a labyrinth's outline,
vanishing slowly into the floor. On the other, a bust
of Saint Barbara lay on a green folding cot. Her eyes
were shut. Down the road, in the green wet grass,
a man lay bleeding from his ear. Worms came out
from under the soil and inched slowly towards him.
He stretched out his hand to me as I walked by, but
I was already too late, and my brown dog was pulling
on its leash, and I hadn't really slept in three days.
###
As I walked down the tunnel
I would turn, periodically,
and look back towards the place
of the threshold. I would see
the oval of light standing there
as a bright stain
that was smaller each time.
I came to a joint in the tunnel,
where it turned, and began to slope
more steeply downwards, into more silent depths,
and although I paused at this place, I did not turn back.
For a long time,
I believed I could feel a kind
of lesser darkness hovering
behind me, an afterimage of
light reflected, however weakly,
from the dirty stone and burnt
plastic, the smashed rubble
and wreckage that had gathered
there, at the joint where the past
met its end. But I didn't turn around
anymore, and eventually the feeling
went away, and then, finally,
there was nothing at all to be seen.
###
I felt myself carried
away. I moved backwards,
with a bronze disc
beneath my tongue.
There were thousands
of miles around me.
Between stone pillars, a
bundle of months
fell open. The depth
of the valley meant
there was water
here once. There
was a lit match
on the mountain,
a palmed card
slid into the crevice
between false teeth.
I felt I was in a place
with no interior.
My arms collected my
hands. My lips
spoke to me.
"In life you don't have
discrete experiences,"
they said,
"only in memory."
###
David C. Porter is a writer and photographer from the American northeast. He edits Keep Planning, and writes Garden Scenery. His work has also appeared in various other places. His first novel, NTTN, was published by Organ Bank Industries