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Monday, December 14th, 2009
It was insistent, the corpse, in the daughter’s careful execution of the process, as if the octopus was asserting its physical presence all the more that she cut into it.
Doctor, exactly how many autopsies have you performed in your professional career?
I can only attest to my activities on certain days, communications with the dead often arise in memory gaps, and rather than involve myself in some ridiculous pursuit, I’d prefer to just say I’m usually making my way to church in the morning.
When did you first observe the body in question?
I’m not sure I can admit such things without contradicting myself. The environment around here, it seems to be withering. Can you feel a certain deadness in the air?
What condition was the body in when you first saw it, Doctor/Daughter?
I was in a state of hysteria. No, I was looking in the mirror, to better understand myself, to, at that moment of discovery, look into and understand my soul. I was furnished with words, so many words. There was a slight gurgling in my belly. I wanted to reach out a limb, but felt like a sinking ship, sinking back into the sand to take the place of the body. I paused and paused again. I could not find the subclavian artery, as if it had been ripped out, and for a moment, could not sense my own heartbeat. I muttered to myself, the objects of my mind like secrets floating on waves. I had thoughts, like a poet, mingling and habits imitating. I repeated and repeated
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myself, with replies only, something mean and menacing about the corpse in the sand. I was far from heaven, faith scarcer than the dark, a practicality keen on having nothing to do with life, perhaps, a mistake. I felt ambiguous, amorphous, needing clarification, needing clarification now. A dream of the open sea. A dream of silver water and tumbling walls. A dream of a good god, a shameless god, an exposure like floating in a hot air balloon. I may be confused, a flattening of my body areas, an absence of any reflex in the eyes when the light shone in them, a pronouncement of death, from above.
What exactly did the autopsy reveal, Doctor?
That two brothers stamp their feet before climbing the steps. That they stand in awe of numbers, but the octopus, at arm’s length, turns soft and drops. That squirts of holy water exiting from the funnel act like geometrical diagrams or maps, an hourglass full of sand, a traveler finding her way home. A daughter growing inside a belly, swelling like apple blossoms, the octopus is a good observer. A female, building a wall of stones to seal the entrance to her cave, strings of unhatched eggs hanging from the ceiling, squirting holy water to keep the eggs clean, what is the color of a fading language?
Daughter, is there more?
I peered into the body, the mantle, and saw my own hands reaching back at me. I peered into your eye and realized all this eye had seen is mine and more. I shuddered. This is all projected in the form of mystery or legend or a pair of friends and the deeds we perform, we or she or you or I, the sphere of consciousness, or perhaps, this all need not be documented here.
One of these days, we will all fall from God’s grace, his empty, suffocating, embrace.
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