A Little Light Reading

The bodies were burning like charcoal in a furnace, emitting the same awful smells that traced the same awful memories for those watching in numb indifference. I was holding my breath waiting for a reaction from them, waiting, but they didn't even flinch. I could feel my stomach drop against the coarse moments of utter compromise; I was drowning in the cacophony of their silence. The smoke and ash billowed up with human flesh, and I was a thousand miles away but I swear I could feel the warmth of a house ablaze. I quickly realized how unadvised it was to breathe this air so I cupped my face in my hand, so dishonestly, and curled up on the floor, my only chance of survival was in being submissive. The smoke was draped over me like a thick wool blanket in the middle of summer. I was being strangled by the strings of cloudy human hair and skin and marrow from their bones; its all filling my lungs now...

I see a class, they're all sitting around talking about a book. And she's walking into the ocean. She's going to find freedom and she finds it by never coming back. They're all just sitting there, just sitting. I don't understand why the room is so foggy and why there's laughter over the intercom, awful drunken laughter. She turns around before she walks in, like she knows how much I want to follow her. But then she's gone, into the water. The waves are tossing and turning at her waist; they fill up and pummel her over and over again. The rise and fall of such a vehement force knocks over her small frame, and she reluctantly begins to move forward, her weak arms paddling, her thin legs shuffling sand around her ankles. I know she'll make it. It's easy to succeed when your objection is to fail.

But then she starts to transform, the whole scene, transforming right before me. Her hands grow thicker, larger, her face more angular, with stubble etched on. Her eyes and skin darken. Her hair falls out. The waves toss into sheets and blankets of royal blue and she lashes out at me, her boyish face in anguish, a lust bursting at the seams from her thick eyebrows. From 'his' thick eyebrows... I can feel the pressure of his body like a thousand feet of sea water. And it's all coming down at the same time. He's breathing so fast but I can't get enough oxygen to say a word. And I know in my silence is the acknowledgment of consent. I would swim, but I've lost fear for the sharks in these waters. I'm not sovereign in my own body.