It was a crack on the ceiling above
me that stole my attention. O what a strange shift in the sky, this oddly
shaped crack. I couldn’t decide if it was a rabbit, hopping along through the
grass, or a seagull, flying along the horizon. But whatever it was, I felt a
familiarity with its character. I looked with perfect concentration, hoping to
discern the spirit of it, although the quaking underneath me was
disconcertingly distracting. I felt the earth move and shake beneath but I was
determined to ignore it. A light danced about the room, bouncing across my face
and into my eyes from its perch on the desk—too far to be knocked over by an
errant hand. It blinded me momentarily with a bright flash of energy and I
blinked with the eyes of a reborn woman. I lifted myself slightly, hoping to
catch another glimpse of the glorious light, but alas it evaded me, forcing me
to settle back into my skin. But instead I stared at the break in the sky
again, wondering again, only in my head, what sort of secret mischief it was
hiding. I almost began to giggle, hoping I could tell the crack that I too had
secrets, that I too was holding a secret in my corner in the corner of my mouth
in the corner of my innermost corners where even I dare not venture. And O
sweet mark on the ceiling, here to distract and to occupy, and to comfort. I
look at it now and see a horse, bucking and bucking and bucking until the rider
is motionless beside him! I want to ask why, but the horse whimpers away with
his tail between his legs while I’m bucked away as well. I think we share a
story, the rider and I. The shaking continues. The walls are bumped and thumped
and O I want to shake them with my fists but they won’t let me be no matter how
many times I thrash and wriggle and push them away. My eyes follow the shaking
walls up to the meeting place and O there is my mark, that glorious eyesore on
the ceiling, which has transformed in front of my very eyes into a wave,
crashing against the shore. The waves draw me away from the shaking and the
breaking and I can’t help but stare in wonder at the beauty that it becomes.
How did it get there? How did the waves make their way onto the ceiling to rest
in an ever unresting fury of change and motion? They motion to me with old lady
fingers bending at the knuckle beckoning me closer and closer with only their
fingers and the small whispers. The waves look dangerous as though any moment
the boat floating innocently on them will be dashed to pieces on the rocks
nearby. But who are the waves and who is the boat and why do they want me so
near? Are they here to cause me harm? Suddenly, the crack does not look so
welcoming. I almost shout to it, asking if it has malicious intent, but instead
I am overtaken by the shaking and the rocking and the bed underneath me that will
not simply lie still! I almost have seasickness staring up at the waves and
feeling the waves underneath. I glare in fury at the waves which are no longer
waves but are dancers, making their way aggressively across the ceiling,
dancing and leaping and curtsying and moving their wanton bodies swifter and
swifter and faster and faster until I want to shout in fury and in fear at them
until they stop. But I open my mouth to scream out my terrifying yelp but fall
back before the sound comes out. There is straining above me and straining
inside me and the dancers mock me with their elegant hands and their elegant
feet and their elegant, elongated, evasive faces. There is jeering from them,
forcing its way into my heart while they force themselves upon me. I am forced,
I am broken, I am no longer here. The weight on my body cannot stop pushing me
further and further away from myself. No! I want to wrap my hands in the quilts
and yell no, O no, O no, O no! The dancers are a stampede, a stampede of
elephants screaming no in mocking mirth, laughing at my crying face with all of
the no and O let me be. But they will not let me be! They will not leave, and
he will not leave, and my heart is all the way up into my throat, in my cold
straining throat that whispers out prayers into the night of O let me be. No I
will not he growls with his body, and no the elephants laugh at me. No I sob
for mercy and receive none and no I do not want to be here, staring at the
elephants with their eyes staring back, cold and unfeeling. O that the no I cry
were heard by anyone, anyone but the elephants who care not at all for my
plight. My keening has reached the ears of none. The elephants are no longer
what they were—they have transformed, one more time, into a cage. Deep in the jungle
and the mountains they are a cage made of ten thousand elephants and just one
simple woman with her eyes screwed shut tight and her hands banging against the
tall the tall lines that keep her inside and she cannot help but scream no as
she tries to force them away and away and off and nothing is stopping them no!
She is wild and amazing and I can feel her reaching towards me as I cry no
against the rising tides, the untidy ride, the dark black light that pushes me
further and no, and no, I cannot be here no. Lines run up and down and up and down and push
together, pinning and crushing and hiding me between the bars of my prison no
and I do not know how to stop from suffocating no. And no again and a no as I
rise up up up against the sky in one final no!
I float down like a paper doll
burnt up by the sun, my wax wings melting. No is no, I am on the bed again,
waiting to occupy myself once more.
