Their hands hold so much of me, nest in their palms, the gentle strain of veins nestled in a heart.

 

Their bone-hammers and limb-axes, the skin-adze that takes hairline layers from everyone, those tools. Their hands holding them, their hands. The appearance of them, these people. I found me in this. I led myself in circles, through their circles, breaking the lines. Bone basics and human tenderizing, inside the inside circles, the waves that change and adjust. It was going into a circle, when I arrived, a circumference of societies and people and I made the center, am the center, have not left the center. White, so much white, too much white, white in terms of dark, black, light, lighter, lightened. Planes boats and a wall of starving people saying to me about not going in, about not moving through them, to the next, onward. And I went onward because I know no restrictions, I wanted. I want. And it is beyond strange now to exist without existing, to persist in pieces and minor movements, me being re-tuned, returned.

 

A lathe turns pieces. I turn. I spin. Spin, spin. The world moves nad spins, lullabies of plane engines and boat engines and car engines and my boots designing footprints in loose dirt, in gravel, stamping into the new places I go. I go. I go.

 

I went, have gone, am going. I go, I go.

 

Go.

 

She was wearing a dress and it bowed around her ankles and above the tiny strap of shoes that graced her, holding her up, a column and a tower, towering this woman over me, boarding a plane and still smelling the scent of her neck. Inside too the inside circle there was another circle, another line, another layer, yards of men and women and children, begging me off. Wanting me to leave, to go, to be apart. I went in. I always go in. I am the center. I am still. Inside the inside was what I was searching. A village beyond the villages, people there darker because no sun, a canopy of night, limitless. Her dress red and in image inside, taken by my eyes and burned out. Her maybe waiting at the terminal, seeking my steps, longing. Or perhaps gone and without doubt, leaving and nothing of her behind. Not a shoe, a strap, the red description of her shape, a mold, figurines in windows and light. I broke the last line of men and women and children and there was darkness, glass having become magic, my goal reached: the center. Fires bloomed solid and black and I became, watching. There was no observation, I was consumed. Why I no longer exist. This is also the color of blood but here in darkness there is only black. Even red is black. Black is black. Emptiness and yet I was full, am full. I am a part of my parts, whole, unholy.

 

Darkness is absolute. Darkness is.

 

They praised my tired arms, the legs that did not function having breached so many lines, circles, come into center and become the focus. Their eyes said such arms, such legs, but their mouths spoke in darkness and ovals of black. I understood nothing. I understand now, having gone. Even water here is black, rivers are plains and the mountains are only when my legs go up. When they took me up, to show me how far the darkness extended, went, when my legs were back to working, motionless again no more. Forgive these images, there is barely anything left of me. There is nothing left of me. I don't know what I am, how my mind moves on. It is not, does not.

 

In the emptiness there is the sound of birds and a language I will never understand. Chirping from their tongues, clicking and cragged, the peaks of mountains I have crossed. The lights going out. I go out and never return. I will never return.

 

Go. I go.

 

Yes, yes. There is darkness inside of me. I turn my eyes backwards and see it. I see.

 

If I had hands still I would want you to hold them. I do not.

 

Going, I go. I have gone.

 

There is no protection from this darkness.

 

Darkness is an image of me before I lost my body, my pictorial.

 

She kissed my cheek I remember and the kiss became wind and the wind here, in the dark, is black and warm, feeling on my cheek as blackened water and red. Her dress and the maybe still waiting strapped ankles, the windows of the terminal, the blank places I will never revisit. No existence. Light bulbs will only work with electricity and there is no electricity here and so there is no magic. I am their magic, my white limbs. I resonant here, did, do even though I am missing. Her kiss is liquid, sliding down my face and underneath the collar I used to wear, I no longer wear, the buttons of my shirt that sprinkle their eyes when they sleep, the four holes for thread are to them, these people, a godly division, the art of their plastic refined and without edge. These borderless people, this dark. In darkness. The picture she holds or did hold or was holding, lessens me and minimizes, until I am no more. I am no more. There may be fish in this darkness, in these rivers, but they too would be black, and I am easier to find. My red is more black, my darkness is more profound, given the white of my arms and legs, the glow of my torso without a shirt. I huddled inside of the village, the world I came to observe, and became the village, the persistence of their consumption, the ever-waning vastness that used to be me. I truly hope she is not waiting, I am never going back.

 

She waits and I exist. I am existent. Exit. There is no exit. Would I to return she would kiss me again, the sun of her lips, warming, burning through this blindness. Me, dropped into a place without light, the darkness, the black. The shatter of me, my pieces, crumbling down and through their hands.

 

Digest this.

 

I write, have written, the words always the same words that come when I go.

 

I have gone.

 

The words, the always:

 

Go, go, go.