Counting Tragedies

It starts with one thousand anxious voices

Whispering like far-off rapids

Across cooled bed sheets as a good morning.

Breath catches, holds, leaves,

But there is a tremble on split lips that wasn't there

When the black of night covered pale eyes.

.

The world is off, not sideways or tilted,

Not crooked or misaligned

But so intrinsically wrong

That I sneer and snarl at scrambled eggs

As though they will be the death of me.

They will be. They will be. They will be.

.

I tap like a bird on a city windowpane

Begging for scraps of relief that ritual never brings.

It is a passing guest through the hotel lobby of my heart

Never a permanent residence.

Who would want to stay where numbers are law

And movement is prison?

.

It vibrates inside me, moves like continental plates,

Pushing, pushing, pushing until I erupt

In a storm of burning compulsions,

An electrical storm of error processing and acidic fear,

Until the world is just right again.

As if it ever was. As if it will ever last.

.

It is rare.

Sitting on the tongues of Other Folk as a badge of honour,

A point of pride

That their notes and pens and books fit inside boxes and lines

While I am pulling out individual hairs because if I don't...

If I don't, if I don't, if I don't...

.

The Other Folk check their doors and go to sleep

While I wear miles into my socks running the same loop,

Touching the same handles,

Checking, checking, and checking

Because it isn't the door, was never the door,

But the tragedy that will befall me if I ignore one step.

.

Are there tragedies being counted on organized desks?

Or do they fall into the mess of clutter?

It isn't about cleanliness or balled-up socks left out.

I am counting the tragedies I've missed.

They would die. I would die. The illness is coming.

Memories twisted, disjointed, false.

.

Sometimes I stand beneath the waves drowning me and watch

The Other Folk with their pretty little eccentricities.

Aligning a crooked painting and organizing pens.

They don't hear the war drum pounding in their temples,

Demanding an exhausted soldier keep marching.

It's so beautiful when they do it.

.

But I can feel the touch of the contaminated acorn

Lingering on the pads of my fingers

For minutes. Hours. Until the ritual sacrifice

Of fresh skin cells has been offered to the bar of soap

And the claws of a scrub brush.

It isn't enough.

.

I want to tear the pocket from its seams

And incinerate the silky fabric,

Bottle the smoke and ash and debris

And toss it into space, hurl it into the sun

But then I would have to move systems, galaxies,

Until the light from the sun was but a blip in the black.

.

I would still feel the touch of the contaminant.

Even in the far, cold reaches of empty space

I would feel it occupying the same reality as me.

Words said a decade ago cover me in filth even here, even now.

It is metaphysical, it transcends so that it can

Keep me safe even in the dark abyss of space.

.

It screams inside, echoes off my skull until I have no choice

But to bow, bend, and break in compliance.

Knuckles raw, eyes red, lips tired from moving

Around the same sentences and patterns,

There is spoiled milk knocked over in my mind

And I am just trying to get the smell out of the folds of my brain.

.

What is left but the pacifying hum of fours and sevens,

Thirteens and twenty-twos?

What is left but the careful stomping of feet?

The easy, familiar roll of four one way and four the other.

They take the terror away.

They soothe the burns they cause.

.

It is rare to live in the world of numbers and rituals,

Counting, miscounting, and counting again.

No one wants to be a permanent residence

But plenty like to pass through,

Fussy travellers interested in a cleaner desk.

With liking things to be aesthetically pleasing.

.

Dancing with the line of order is a fine way to be.

It needs no name, no history, no validation

Because if the world ended tomorrow,

The other folk would be content with surviving

While I would be tapping tree bark and counting leaves,

Busy preventing the next tragedy.

.

Silver Serpent Books

Nathalie Daux

.