Real Picture Thinkers

            I dreamed that the shadows were poltergeists. The shadows reach out and wrap their limbless limbs generata into themselves. There's darker darkness, almost red, reeling in their chests. They didn't move except their mouths, but then they convinced children to roll glass bottles and remote controls across the floor. When my parents saw my younger sister roll a wine bottle from the closet to his hands, they didn't hear the voice, and they didn't see her moving except to grab it in the end. When she was old enough to talk about it, she couldn’t remember ever moving the bottle with her mind. But I saw it, disembodied.
            When I woke, I wasn't afraid of the dark. I was afraid of the voices claiming to be timeless and the noses poking out of the corners. The medial cleft nudging into and out of the light. I remembered that I made the shadow real. I had hunched my shoulders in the corner and bent my neck down to birth a shadow from my chest with the white walls. White palms open and obliged by leaning against them and forgetting to turn out the light. The shadows weren't made of the house, they weren't in the foundation, they weren't out of the sunrise and sunset. They were a mutual agreement between body and light bulb.
            In that real room, my older brother had kept his collected rocks when he was young. Everyone collected rocks. The ones that would look a beautiful ruddy red in the water, but dry to the same gray-brown of all the others plucked out. Everyone keeps them in boxes under their bed or in their closet, or the ones still tinged pink or orange on their windowsills. They were beautiful once, under the algae and liquid sun. Sometimes they pull down the cartoon-pasted cardboard and take the rocks to the bathroom sink, to rub them red for a few minutes again, leaving them in muddy water on the counter to dry and go back into the dark. Heavy treasure collections. When my brother moved out, he took his rocks with him. I found more boxes, rubbing down the dust in his closet, heavy with gray rocks, light with black volcanic obsidian and scoria.
            Scoria—once a hotter red than I could ever imagine touching, air trapped inside to make it feel light as styrofoam peanuts. There would always be shadows inside there, unless crushed to dust and lain out supplicant inside a cube of light. There are only no shadows for a light source, and these shadows would still be so minute to almost not exist, but even knowing they were microscopically there pulled my eyes away from environment and into them again. The bubbles were so small they overwhelmingly nauseated me as much as, in theory, fascinated me. Trypophobia: fear of tiny holes that could kill us if we saw them poking through skin. The shadow of my nose on my cheek when I turned was another source of anxiety. When I was young I spent hours worrying that one eye saw my nose dark and one eye saw it light. One eye saw more red and one eye saw more blue. I didn’t worry when I looked into the sun, eyes open or closed, a light so white it blended to the blue sky or veins so red they pushed through to the optic nerve. And there in my dream I knelt down to touch noses with a shadow. There I bent and cradled a shadow in and into my gut like I was lava hardening with itching skin.
            Whenever I imagine shadow—true shadow, where we still believe light is somewhere to cast it instead of simple abandoned lightless spaces—there are red pyramids and blue spheres polishing each other brighter and brighter. They can’t talk and their bodies don’t make friction, but I imagine backing toward the light before I turn away, out of the room, and try not to think about my nose or its pores or the fact that I can only see my eyes firsthand if I take one out first.


Inspired by a classmate's Soma(tic) creation—Shadow-Watcher.

Refutation

We came to receive the dead
no hands but our hands
under their flesh—
no one wanted to say they were dead already, no one wanted to say, “I’m gonna die soon,” so the flesh pressed in like the indentation of spring soil, opening up for seed and forgetting to close up again, needed to close up to bring up the roots, but wouldn’t close up again around our fingers, just hung open and wet and stank a fierce cry out to the wagons like we were killing them again. Feet yellow and peeling with soft heels—don’t touch ‘em, just let ‘em drop, nowhere to go now but down.
            Funny they should be open for seed and we take ‘em all and bury ‘em down, acorn shells like we could forget ‘em over winter and have a new man spring up somewhere else. Takes root somewhere else, so we never know it’s the same man with the punctured, sunken-in chest holes. No telling the women when their fever got too hot that they would grow up again somewhere else. We just hoped they let their body be quiet so we’re not blamed for their silence, for their not calling out to us, “Help me”/”I can’t” and waiting without the long wait for their chest holes to come out.
            The wheels crack and turn, reluctant like a cat smacked when it comes to the door then called to come again. Wagon’s heavy cause there’s a dead weight. Those hearts filled up with sludge that oozes out of their lungs and noses even though they aren't breathing to push it out. Their hearts heavier than a boomin’ heart keepin’ the skin from breaking. They're breaking apart all over, and the wood is breaking cause of ‘em too. They’re seven to a wagon, even though our hands are already tired and our legs tired from pushing ‘em in. They're falling all over themselves like they never knew how to lay still and pray. We're scared of ‘em falling on us again, spread like yellow pollen all on everything, so we make the trip more times to keep them where they're at. All the cats already screamed outta the street for the smell. There is no food in this flesh, just like there is no man left standing ‘til he’s gone to seed and fallen all apart and ended up in our hands.
            Only a quarter mile to the graves. Pastor stopped worrying so much about the markers. We hope he’s praying all the time, cause there isn't anyone else who can kneel and then feel know they're gonna stand back up. It’s those women on their backs with their hands on their stomachs, praying, pray to us, and then spitting at us cause we aren't the angels they ask for. We’re nothing but shadows when the fever comes on that talk to them in madness, say, “Help me”/”I can’t.”
            Their children stay quiet and stop crying when the sun sets, and they still look up at the rooftops through the ceilings and see there the gathering of soot and smoke, and none of it stinks like the ground does with the water coming down from the sky and washing down that soot to make their feet more dirty with the waste. We’re one to say we know how they feel, with those feet in mud and shit so it clumps over their toes and makes their breaths shuffle down, breaths come heavy and heavier by the time they've gone quiet. It was still their mamas sitting and crying that would give out more calls—they’d like not to die—but they're sitting and crying in the dark with their hands on each child’s head.
            The children have no idea their papa’s already dead in our fingers, but they peel apart too and wither like they sat in the sun too long, their little eyes yellow and cast down like daffodils. But here now, they know now. They find out real easy cause the air isn't fresh, Pa is dead, and it isn't like us to sit down for a minute and say we're sorry about it cause we have more of the witherings to bring down and pile down and all our eyes are cast down too.
            The dirt is dry ‘til we touch it, then it flows over like rose petals flipped inside out after rain. We got some to just stay and shovel dirt and mud, six feet across and twelve feet wide, twenty pairs of feet cause there’s nobody left to mourn for their soul like there should be, they're just mourning their own lives and the lives of the people still awake. Shovelin’ like maybe if we plant ‘em all together there’s a rooster crow on the other side to lead them up all at once in the springtime, yellow-green sprouts outta their graves and back to their woman’s arms to forget us all over again. We came to receive the dead, we gotta anyway, and we gotta hope that maybe our seeds find darker soil and shoot up taller than the men we smell falling apart on the road. No hands but our hands, and those wagons still used like they’re not going to set ‘em burning as soon as the sun stops shedding their skin so they can light the fire. We're only rich in the pollen spilling over the edges, stand and hope fire strikes down mercy for the wood and the sick spilled outta their mouths.
            We gotta stop eventually and pull down our eyes to cover all we got left. Dark comes up over the murky yellows and those children smell themselves coming apart and they lean on the walls and cover their mouths, but their feet get splashed anyway—they’re dyed yellow anyway—and soon they're gonna sit on down and not get back up. Even though they're still leanin’ up like they have listening to do.
            Sleep comes like it could reconcile our blood with our bodies. There’s that yellow fog sneaking into dreams like you could reach out and bring it to your lips leaking through your fingers like liquor if you weren’t already running from it. Like you couldn’t run during the day or during the night cause there was always enough light to rise up that yellow fog. It's coming in your dreams through your hands when you touch your eyes and they get dim and orange like the flame’s goin’ out in a second. You’re outta your body and you seeing it fall apart like you're the ground in an earthquake you've heard of, Hell reaching outta your chest and bringing all of yourself back in. If any one of us stepped outta ourselves we’d go full bloom into the haze.

Rachel Maria Məráj Davis

Here and there Rachel Maria Davis picks up a rock and pretends a celestial being can hear her better when it’s being rubbed. Any celestial being and any rock, but preferably smooth in texture and in philosophy. So it won’t catch as much when put in her pocket. Rachel Maria Davis prays before bed. Only when everyone else is asleep. Rachel prays for her pets and parents and friends away in college in Minnesota and Utah State. She prays to always safely cross at cross-walks. She doesn’t carry rocks to bed for this purpose. Rachel once did keep crystals under her pillow, but these were to attract supernatural beings, not for discourse. Rachel Maria Davis once had a dream a woman in see-through purple robes floated in her window while she slept. Rachel Maria dreamed the woman picked her up and carried her to a moon-sized star. The star bubbled with iron and oxygen. Rachel dreamed that this was her true home. She dreamed that Rachel Maria was not her only name. She sewed herself a robe for when the woman would come find her. Rachel Maria Davis was 11 years old. No one that she knew of saw her drawings of the woman in the window. Her brother admired the sketchy pencil lines around the woman’s feet and hands without fingers or toes. Somewhere else a woman went to bed with purple pajamas. She dreamed Rachel Maria Davis rang her doorbell and handed her a bouquet of purple and white tulips. It was the middle of winter, but the snowflakes on their petals didn’t melt when she brought them inside. She could see the shapes the ice made like they floated right to her eyes when she looked at them. Rachel Maria Davis wasn’t invited inside, and simply walked away. She was barefoot. The woman couldn’t hear the crunch of the snow and ice under her heels. No one else dreamed of a girl bringing tulips that night. Many more people dreamed of themselves caught in a field of horses. The pintos and palominos ran through them like ghosts. The clouds were low. The sky inclined to be almost touchable. On some red ridge of distant sandstone, someone else laid on their back and dipped their hands into cumulus clouds. Their hands were cold up to the wrists. When they brought them down to their chest, they broke off in pieces of frosted ice. In their place grew silver fingers. They could dip their new fingers into their chest and feel their heart contracting. Their hands fell into the sand at their sides and they just watched the clouds waltzing above. Just below them, someone else was dreaming that God’s hands reached down to them in the middle of the night. He reached through a mountain and touched the top of their head. Like a kiss with His fingers. They felt a warmth course through them so hot they could almost see color—they could almost see red in the grays. Rachel Maria Davis was dreaming of summer by the horse dreamscape. The mosquitoes glowed as they emerged from a fire. They trickled into the sky and became stars. A sudden storm from white clouds brought down droplets of lightning. They landed on Rachel’s bare legs and freckled them with tiny star shapes with perfectly equal points. When she touched them they stung. The fir trees bent over and smoothed out Rachel Maria Davis’s legs, leaving only bright stripes of comet tails. When Rachel Maria Davis woke up, she picked up a branch from her favorite tree. Rachel Maria peeled off the bark and cut the broken ends. She sanded them by hand. Her fingers were tired and unfeeling for twenty minutes. Rachel was satisfied when she saw a star-shaped core that went all the way through. Rachel Maria Davis picks up the wand sometimes when she feels particularly spiritual. She points the wood into her chest and then straight up from between her breasts. She imagines spirals of light inkling out of the tip slowly then quickly like a spider’s web. She doesn’t imagine the end of the light strands. She also doesn’t imagine their infinity. She imagines disturbing the balance of the universe with positive crystalline energy. The strands of light disappear into the darkness somewhere above her. The sky ripples like disturbed still water. She sets the rod and the rocks on dark-wood shelves of her bookcase and then goes out. She kept her crystals in particular in a small box under her bed. Right under her pillow. She figures that it can’t hurt to leave them where they are. Sometimes she dreams that they whisper and then burst into thin pink shards that coat the entire street.