Divided Into Zero

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I am inside a car...

...driving far into the

countryside with my father.

I am seven years old.

Exactly five weeks from now...

...my father will burn to

death in this very car...

...after driving into a street divider.

The steering wheel will shatter

and drive itself through his torso.

He will die in agony...

burning... impaled...

...his innards exposed

and sizzling upon his lap.

Five weeks from now... but not now.

I will always remember him

as he was on this day.

Repetition is ritual.

There is nothing for me to

discover or understand.

I can only go through the

motions of persistence.

Memories long faded return to

me from out of the darkness.

Even now I disintegrate

in their presence.

It turns my stomach

into broken glass.

In the end, I'll find myself

where I began.

And I shall start again.

At the moment of my cesarean birth...

...the doctor's scalpel sliced

clumsily against my inner thigh...

...opening me as he had

done to my mother.

From the stories I was told,

I bled as profusely as she had.

Looking back now, I can see

that it was a fitting introduction.

Whatever the case and in spite of

my not remembering the incident...

...I've lived my life with a

fascination for bleeding fine cuts.

I can't say that I understand it...

...but it is as much a part of me

as my fingers, eyes and teeth.

Every now and then I pay

for the company of a woman.

I have her stand over me as

she bathes me in her warmth.

I breathe her taste... taste her

smell, marinate in her essence.

I close my eyes and allow her

to run through me.

Imagining her heat as a hot, white

ocean of sanctifying purification.

She runs across my pores,

cleansing them deeply... sweetly.

Erasing everything

that I wish, wasn't there.

Soldering me back together.

But I know that it's my

destiny to remain divided.

Not long after the

death of my father...

...I found my mother hanging

from a light fixture in the kitchen.

There were tears still

moist on her cheeks...

...even though she'd

already begun to turn blue.

I could never understand

why she had chosen to die.

Perhaps the possibility

of living without torment...

...was so far removed

from her realm of experience...

...that she was more afraid of healing

than she was of suffering.

Whatever the case, I was alone.

I waited several days

before calling the police.

I watched her decompose

in the kitchen.

For as long as I could remember,

I felt like an old man.

Now, I am as I had always

perceived myself to be.

I sometimes wonder if the man I was had

ever really existed in the first place.

It all seems like a faint echo

from a past life experience.

As if everyone I've ever known has left to

live their lives in an alternate vortex...

...that I will never find.

I've spent a lifetime

working up the strength...

...to speak to people

who no longer exist.

What's left inside of me

will never find its shape in articulation.

I now know that there will

always be ghosts in me.

They have grown to become

my very foundation.

If there is a God, my sole

prayer is to never be reborn.

There is a crack in the center of me.

I've lost myself deep inside of it.

I can't stop my mind

from haunting my soul.

And all the logic in the world

will not save me.

I don't know how it is

that I'd become what I am.

But my values are meaningless.

I'm cold in my warmth.

Warm in my absence.

I'm very, very afraid.

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