From Where I Pretend this Game

I let myself sink.

As I sink into the cold embrace of sand and earth, I feel I’m being pulled by the call of the stars above. I move up and down, in and out, both at the same time. I panic for a moment. I grab on to the earth, trying to hold on––no longer to a vestige of humanity, of memory, of purpose. I just try to hang on to any remnant of sensation–even if just of my fingers trying to crack.

Even what used to be strength of hands have become simple waves of electrical pathways, electrical storm all around; the pathway of lightning strike flowing through an empty body, no longer resisting sound or light; a pure vessel no longer existing, no longer present.

I pretend now for the sake of argument that I remember being some thing, some one, perhaps. I pretend for the sake of the game that I sit on a chair, that a body contains me, that the ocean before me does not inundate the space a mind used to occupy.

I pretend for the sake of the semblance of sanity that it is my voice that I hear, that the ocean I observe is an ocean like any other, that one day I will no longer fight the eternal presence of the naked reality.

I pretend that I forgot the empty space without. I pretend that I move in a world round, made of mud and fire; that I walk upon its surface in a body created from the ocean’s salty waters that contains life, movement, purpose.

I pretend that I have a life. I immerse myself no longer in the memory of the beloved but in the dreaming, in the flow of illusions. I realize that I do not need to lose myself in a completely created constructed reality. It is perhaps enough to grab a tiny piece of a memory… a sound… a word; maybe her eyes; maybe a fight; maybe the pretension that I cared about what was happening to me at some point or another in a lifetime that no longer concerns me, or you, or anyone else.

I pretend that I’ve forgotten, that I care about what happens to this illusion of self and memory.

I pretend that I become fascinated with the shiny lights below, reflecting those other stars lost in the immensity of darkness. I look at the grains of sand. I make them important. I turn them into light, into fire, into sensation. The sensation gives way to a form of hand, of arm, of movement, of once space following the other.

Logic, flowing. Language, forming. Yes, no. Dark, light. Good, bad. Male, female. Up and down. Nice and pain. I make it into a game, pretending that the shadows do follow the movement of the body.

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