…my head is screaming…my screaming…screaming… …and the mourning doves grieve above me, nestled amongst black locust thorns… …the blue jays’ throats shriek in time with the vibrations of my tangled thoughts… …the crows bow their heads, lowering their eyes, so as not to see… …my head is screaming…everything is spinning… …the vultures wheeling in eigengrau sky…above my body… …a feral hound, black infinite, submits at my side… …a shallow grave, a vessel collecting rain…scrying…and a deathly baptism… …my head is screaming…my screaming…screaming… …wind chimes clashing…silver stacking…knives sharpening… …it doesn’t hurt to hear my fear… …and I don’t succumb… …my mouth bleeding… …the street lamp flickers and goes dead… …the shadows that come forward, garden my soul…burning cypress and laurel, moss and lichen…smoldering stone…and ignite…the pitch fly’s home… …Fly Agaric spirit rites… …my head is screaming…the voice is smoking… …you’re not dying…you’re dying…dying… …my pulse…drumming, pounding, sounding music…my head is percussive beats… …the voice is smoking… …you’re surviving…reviving…inviting… …the water rises…swallowing my body, my face…taking me under…silently sinking…golden spiraling… …coming out on the other side…upright and dry… …dusted in dirt and sunlight… …the voice is smoking…this is what bone feels like bleaching, disintegrating…your hair loose in the breeze, length and weight, are willow lashes designing…language in the grasses…you’re not there…you’re not here…you’re not dead…you’re won…and one…

{I wrote this and had been sitting on it days before I read a quote from Yasunari Kawabata (川端 康成), House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories…but that is how my life has always been…timing…the things I see and hear within my head, colliding with the outside world…it’s happened so often and for so long, I know it’s not coincidence}

E.A. O'Connell