Canyons

Everything is so dim that I'm starting to believe that the world is lit by candles.  I want to remove the clouds from the sky and get a magnifying glass, peeking deeply into the woven blue quilt, looking for the tiny peepholes that will expose the candles, dimly lighting up the sky.

That's how I feel.  At least through my eyes, as everything is hard to see.  The world is so blurry, warm salty springs sprouting mad rivers down my sun damaged cheeks, falling into the grooves of the sags.  Not dripping down to my breasts anymore, rather, getting caught in the deep canyons, and then evaporating into the empty sky.  I'm certain that my whole face tastes like a salty bay, slowly moving water collecting that taste more dilligently than the ocean.

But my eyes, my face, the sky, that's nothing.

If you performed open heart surgery, cutting through my exhausted flesh, examination room light beating down to my pale pale chest, you would be surprised by the findings (or, the lack thereof).  Four-hundred and twenty three days ago, a day which I remember in the most detailed of memories, I drove down a black city street with beautiful stars looking down at me saying, "It will be okay."  But it wasn't.  I cried for fifteen miles on Second Street, Spring Garden, Broad, Ridge Avenue.  And somewhere along the dilapidated trash-scented air I managed to lose an entire organ to the gutters.  And which gutter, I don't know, but it is gone for good.  Possibly on the black market, possibly in the chest of another at this very moment.

But I can say only one thing for sure:  Despite the heaviness of my face and the warm creeks trickling down my sunspotted cheeks, none of it makes up for the emptiness in my chest.  None of it.