I was thinking about you when I stepped out from the curb into the path
of a Yellow Cab. The jagged patch of crisp blue sky, edged with the
black filigree of East Side fire escapes, waved around like a flag and
continued to sway gently as I lay tangled on the ground.
Absurdly, my mind continued to hold on to the thought of you, while layers
of human concern gathered over me. First the random mix of colors,
smells and voices-- concern in Babel. The silhouettes of heads now replacing the jagged tops of facades around my patch of sky.
Then there were the sirens and lights, flashing translucently in the
bright morning sun. A new layer of navy blue and black; the smell of
gasoline and hot, dry rubber tires. They reverently lift up my body
like a broken chalice, unaware that absurdly, it is still filled only
with the thought of you.
It is all I have become, my whole existence precariously held together
by the very thought that placed me in the path of
the monster city like a sacrificial lamb. This thought, now full of the captured sky rolls around like a marble in the bottom of the broken chalice; barely missing the fresh, jagged edges between my life and my death as
the ambulance sways through the busy streets.
I slide out of the ambulance horizontally and in under yet another layer
of human concern. The swish of scrubs and medical smells; the sounds of
electric instruments are like so many sirens, distant like the streets
outside; miniature, Liliputian to my broken body, now tied to the bed and
the metal boxes by wires and tubes.
A gentle fog descends and obscures the universe. There is only a small,
blue glow; a fuzzy light at the center of my existence-- it is my existence.
The thought of you will not keep me alive, I know, but will not let it
go. I am too mesmerized by the blue and frozen momentum, not to flirt
with a further fall from grace. The thump of my confused physiology
tells me I am alive, but my life still leaks out through cracks and
jagged holes left by the missing shards; runs down the stem of the chalice
into a tarmac-gray oblivion.
Killer McQueen by AmiBly
From:
King Guezo of Dahomey 1850-52: The Abolition of the Slave Trade on the West Coast of Africa
