March 2010 - Bound

For JM.

The heat that approaches is frightening to me.

The auburns and the screaming tangerine swim upwards, snapping wildly, casting darkened lines across my face.  I imagine all but the gleam of my eye is visible, a solitary twinkle among the massing cover of light lacking.  It crawls like a lover into the form and curves of a body lying in wait, linking pieces forming like they should never have been apart.

An unruly imagination could liken the outlines and shapes to the monsters that creep around, waiting for the eyes of children to slowly fall shut, dreams of giant robots and castles in the sky roaming over rolling eyes.  I remember when I used to dream.

Of objects and moulds I watched through square voids that surround me, revealing gold streaked views of ever sprawling worlds, and at other times, silvered oceans that unfurled continuously.  A spy hole that swirled, never stationary, fidgeting without consistent form or thought, a shapeless mirage.

Without my coup, I could be free of these things, and be what I dream of.  To touch, to roam, to play, to love and to hate, to scream, to laugh and to cry and to die a little inside.  A pure wind unstoppable.

But now like tribes angered with vengeful hunger, I am trapped here with the peril that pushes forward, reaching out to me like the tongue of a lizard.  The ones that I have seen on the little box of light sitting darkly in the corner, that suddenly will burst into life, showing massive beasts that flow surprisingly graceful through worlds of blue and gray explosions through which arms throw themselves into the air, chaos surrounding.  And a thousand other things that flash - a crashing slideshow pausing for a moment to then be replaced by something newer, something brighter, and something better hungry and willing to take the centre stage.

The box lies dormant now, almost siding with the figures that wreak havoc in the black.  Allies to the fold.  I wish my legs would take it upon themselves to just run like the rest of me tell them to.  The heat draws itself closer and I feel like I’m beginning to melt, each part of me transforming steadily into sludge as I sink downwards into myself.  I’m paralyzed and isolated; all I can do is watch and melt away.  Why did I have to be here?  Stuck, and unable to save myself. 

If only my little legs could carry me far, far away from me here like Dorothy.  I wish that I could see the fields, the sea and the sky.  I try to close my eyes but my gaze is fixed.  I think inside myself, picturing it all and trying to block out around me.  The monsters are laughing at me now, I can almost hear them above the quiet roar that is building, spurred on by random explosions that spark suddenly and disappear even quicker like an afterthought of regret.  It was never a good idea to do this, they could think.  And then they could all change their mind, the tribe turning backwards and leave me be.

Blazes of kaleidoscopic colour run around my head, light and shadow is ambushing me and I don’t know what to do.  If I could cry, I think I would.  But all I can do is be still, the outside hiding what really is happening.  A torrent of pictures in my head, my own personal box of light strobing faster, edging closer like the mass around me, towering up and about to engulf.  And I can’t even scream aloud, every fibre of my being desperate for it.  Time feels like it’s at a brink, about to stand still.  So close, now it’s all over.

It.  Just.  Stops.

And go.

Like the click of a stopwatch, everything flows over me – the bright gold irking at the shadows, it has come fighting from my very soul.  They stumble back and I feel a rise of emotions so hard and unrepentant I can’t begin to start contemplating.  Black swirls and dim flutters of golden glitter dance then crash and fall, the roar replaced by a silent stillness like all that I show and the melody pleases my ears.  In the distance I hear crowing back and forth, a call in song and I watch as a sheet ripples off runways of green, brand new.

Inside I sigh.  I see it all through the holes in front of me and now more than ever I want to run, to skip, to jump, to dance over it all.  Why can’t I move?

I stare with a longing and will myself, waiting for the moment that I spring into life, racing forwards into a sea of light, of merging and separating again colours, to edges of worlds so I can see over the precipice, the next one revealing itself as the page of the scrapbook is turned.  I glimmer like the lights that fly above me, overseeing the changing of the tides, hiding from one before revealing themselves again in another.  I wait patiently, successfully managing to contain the excitement that whirls inside me like a roundabout that is out of control, gripping so tight, at any second about to fly off into another world that is new and untold.

And I count - one...  two... three.

Then I run.