No Adjectives
We start at the beginning. The anti-burial. You are being opened by the eyelids. What’s her name, again? You try to recall the colours ahead of you, and you can’t. The receipt for the store still in your jeans. The bottle used to carry wine. It’s difficult to stand up. Think hard about a location, maybe home.
How long does it take to stand up? The park isn’t the worst place to wake up, at least, and the bus shelter is getting closer. We pause only when the shoes give way to the concrete underneath. Whenever you want to give up and lay down in the field, yr body is met with the needles of thistles. As though you’re in a festival, or Hell. A man walks past you, is he yr father? Yr fingers try to find a wallet, nothing. The sky blurs, and the eyes can’t focus on anything. How many colours are lost to our fickle memory? The wind screams, the leaves on the trees lowering, faultering. The slaughter of the weather is always happening, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter what month, or the position of the Sun. You are born with a jacket, a toque, and no socks. You are baptized in the gutter. You just are.
She is yr confession—a box where secrets pour out. She is yr communion—breaking bread & the bottle that used to carry wine. You wonder who’s home. The location. What does she smell like? You forgot you were waiting for the bus and walk northward. Up the avenue towards a vision. The matrimony lays on bed beside her. Stop by the pharmacy to shoplift oil for the anointing of the sick. You are given orders to watch sunset tonight after talking to the cashier. The colours return. Plan for the funeral mass, the sequence of start-to-finish. A prophet flying across yr eyesight. This is yr pilgrimage.
