out of the impossible i have no choice but to fabricate the future something said in me. then it laid me down and gave me shiatsu and when i got up from it said i looked different and indeed i felt different. i have walked to shed everything with which i had formerly been laden. then my heart got tired and tired. inside your head the skull says i don’t want to know what it feels like to be you anymore. puts the substance of grass into her fists. talks aloud. the snake upon the bursted fruit. i see a sand where i hold a purple stone up to my eye. ratchet the image up to the level of myself. many friends called but i wasn’t home. then i got home and i was like no actually, no. nobody’s home actually. nobody’s home. i closed the curtains and took off my clothes and laid down on the floor. then a god like a clod of earth descended to the level of my head and looked upon me. i don’t remember how to be in the world i said to it. i wanted to cry and be comforted but maintained my composure and grace, insofar as i could, being that i lay there, prostrate as one might say. i said, i don’t remember how to be in the world; even how to want to; i just project this voice out of the boiling pit at the base of my spine. that is correct it said. well i don’t really want to anymore. that is well understood by us said the little god. i asked it what it wanted from me now. i’m killed i added. i don’t want to write another book or a play. additionally i don’t want to go outside at all. or to eat or drink or know anything or say anything. everything beautiful doesn’t entice me anymore, what is wrong with me, i don’t even want anything. i don’t want anything little god, i said, what is wrong with me. he put away childhood things said the little god, quoting john ashbery. why won’t you just tell me what to do i said. you’re doing it he said. this? what i’m doing as i am doing it? like little jesus on the cross we like you like this said the little god. i don’t like it at all i said. what comes to me i often do not want. that feels like a sin i said. the fish leaps onto my hook. i unhook the hook from its bloodied cheek and throw it back. i do not eat the fish which nevertheless dies. why am i on this pier, whose buoys are those bouncing there, what do you want with me here little god. you are here to be sick and to convalesce it said. you are here for the vision we have prepared for you, toward whose purpose the sun will heat you. there will be a flood and there will be a world there said the small god, a world like a blade of grass. can you draw me back out of this death i asked. can you reverse my root i asked it. i can it said. will you i asked. yes it said. i will. but there is one thing said the little god. anything i said, tell me it, tell me it. this adventure with form that you’ve had, this adventure with form you’ve embarked upon by distrusting it so said the little god. yes i said wearily, my adventure with form, i remember it well, it tastes like puke in my mouth, fleeing everything willing to take shape. indeed said the little god, your abstraction has nearly killed you. do i not have form said the little god. you do i said. and so do you he said. barely anymore i said i am so catastrophized and i have seen too much sorrow. i think god has no shape because of how much misery he’s seen and i feel guilty like him in all his formlessness. you are a clever girl said the little god but of course you also know it is not so simple. i know little god i said. you are commanding that i remember how to wear clothes, how to have taste, how to be a woman, how to want things and care about things. you want me to take a shape as you have taken one. correct said the little god. i have taken this one for your sake, this shape. I can take others. i don’t want to think about what you do for others i said, in my delirium misapprehending his meaning a bit, i don’t want to think about you in other shapes. i want you to be only for me little god. as it happens said the little god, i am only for you. you will get sick said the little god and then you will not be sick anymore and then you will enter the world. if you say so i said. that means making a choice said the little god. uh huh i said. the choice of a voice is no longer my choice i added. correct said the little god. it is now required that you make of form, in form, a choice. a formal choice is what will be required of you said the little god. and that he said is what will become you.
by Ariana Reines
by Ariana Reines
