Eureka. The moment arrived thirty minutes into the rooftop session. The world collapsed, flattened into a thin sheet of paper. One could read it like a poem. Of course, no one actually says Eureka and you didn’t either, but you did understand the urge to dance naked in the streets. At a certain stage of shadowboxing – this is what they don’t tell you because few have got it and the few that have got it still haven’t woken from the dream – you understand everything, are aware of everything. You knew the number of rain drops falling and even in the face of the storming clouds, the veil of the falling eve, you see your own reflection in every single drop. You hear the harmony of the universe. You see the strings. You were on the rooftop because your wife took the car to work and went to happy hour and it was raining so you didn’t want to bike to the gym like a wet dog either. You shadowboxed. Your preferred form of worship. Rain sizzled on contact with your skin and evaporated back into the clouds. You knew thirty minutes had passed because it takes about fifteen minutes for you to skip rope fifteen hundred and it takes about another fifteen for your neck to loosen and swing independent from your shoulders like a pendulum, for your fists to de-ball into a new-born’s grip, for your knees to grow warm from the inside, your hips to square, center, and fix itself as the (zero, zero, zero) of your private universe, and, this you didn’t know because this you never experienced before, but fifteen was what it took for the antennae to sprout from your dome, for the strings dancing your limbs, dancing your soul to reveal their holy presence. You are now standing at the door of a larger truth. It starts with the ball of the feet, a slight stiffening of the ankles. All resistance is gone. Your quads and calves are no longer tight and sore. Your scapulars extend and fold like rubber, like spring. You move your head, bob and weave. You slither across the wooden planks of the rooftop in between the drops of rain. No resistance at all. When you blink, in that other dimension in a blink, you find yourself atop a mad ocean, fickle and intangible. It dips and rises. It whirlpools. You surf the waves, steering by the hips into any direction. You are weightless and you are moving faster, faster than your own will’s dictation, faster than your reaction, than you can perceive. And that’s when you see them, the strings attached to your wrists and elbows, toes and heels, knees and shoulders, hips and spine. These glass noodles radiating eminence, going straight up into the clouds, into the beyond. The antennae top of your head takes in the wind’s grunts, the earth’s moans. Puppeteer’s favorite puppet. This must be freedom. Euphoria. A southwest wind blows, bearing news. It plants on your cheek a kiss of lamentation. Isn’t this how it goes? You understand. You read it in the poem. The highest of highs, lowest of lows. You move your feet, keep it moving. Or is it the strings that do? You wait for a call. The southwest wind told you in the kiss. You already know what happens. You pivot, you lance in and bounce out. You lower your hip and swing your torso down and fore, lop of an executioner’s axe, up and back, heave of a sandminer’s shovel. You sling your jab and shooter, in between the drops of rain. One one two. Slide your feet. One two three. One two three. Or is it the strings that do? You feel so good. The phone rings. The police wants you at the hospital immediately. The one you can practically see from the rooftop. She was so close to home. The rain wets your eyes. You feel so good. You call a car. Even in the ride, you shift your weight from one hip to another and back. You draw a small shield in front of you with your lead shoulder. Your heels don’t touch the floor. Your knees pivot over the toes. Look up, the strings shoot through the roof of the car and move as you do. The driver keeps looking back at you in the mirror. The emergency room has big square tiles, smooth. It grips your feet differently. The black police boots drip rain on the floor, make it wet and slippery. You quiet the female officer speaking at you. The antennae reads the empathy and confusion in her knotted eyebrows, translates into many I’m so sorry. Look up, the strings are growing faint as your limbs idle so you bend your knees again and the heels bounce once more. The nurse at the nurses’ station looks at you blandly, chews gum. The female officer gestures toward deeper down the hallway. You bounce down the corridor. Right hand high guarding your right cheek bone. Left hand low, lulls by the hips, flicks out jabs so fast the tube lights above blink. At the end, in front of the operating room’s double door stand a large man and a small man. Behind them, behind the closed doors, you see strings of faint light blue shoot up, pulsing. Her heart’s tired, seeks rest. “Are you the husband?” The large man asks. His scrub is but a paper veil of lies. His traps reach for his earlobes. The cauliflower ears confess years of being ground on into the wrestling mat until he snapped down necks and folded prides. A boxer’s nemesis, is he supposed be? But he has no strings. He doesn’t stand a chance. Where he stands, you can jab his nose through his thick skull. You pivot and shuffle. You bob and weave right under his nose. He doesn’t like it. You can hear the anger in his exhales. “Where are your shoes?” He looks down at your feet. You’ve lost your shoes. Your toes are phantom. Too fast in motion to cast a shadow. Silly question. Who wears mittens to needlework? You put together a fifteen uppercut combination bombing the dead air. Your lead foot lances in and out between the big man’s flat open stance. The muscles on his folded forearms twitch. “Should I remove him from the premise, doctor?” The large man leans slightly toward the small man, still staring a hole right through your eyes. You can try. You reply in your head. But you are only half a line in the poem. “He’s mourning.” The small man looks at you also behind his glasses. Looks at your dance, you threading a symphony with the wind of two fists. “We shot her up with Adrenaline. Why her heart still beats. Internal bleeding.” The doctor says to you, matter-of-fact. “You have a few minutes. She won’t be conscious.” You look up at her strings behind the double doors. The pulse is weak. The pulse is talking to you. Hi my love, how is your evening? You are angry. The punches you throw, the steps you take, they yank and jerk the strings. You try to pull down the sky! Or is it the strings that do? Eureka. Of course, no one actually says Eureka and you don’t either but you push through the doors and find her broken on the table. Hi my love. You say. You look so beautiful today. Come on. You hoist up her torso, sit her up. You hook your elbows under her armpits and lift and drag and now you are spooning her from behind standing up, her legs dangling, toes barely brushing the floor. And you move, the both of you, on the balls of just your feet, on just your toes. Pivot, jab step, upper cut, left hook. Or is it the strings that do? The strings, hers and yours, twist together, one pulse. You shoot your jab, together. Head body head. Your heads bob and weave. You waltz around the table. You laugh. You feel so good. And the strings, twisted together, one glows brighter and the other more tired, shyer. But you don’t stop. The southwest wind had whispered the end in your ears. You read the last stanza. But you can’t stop. You plead. Hook, line, sinker. You fish for thunder. Lightning in the sky, will you wake the body in doze? Galvanize the heart for it still yearns to beat. Charge the vortex for I am sunk in deep, for if the water is still, the water is dead, and I am drowned. You feel so good. Until the strings no longer can separate. Until they are no more twists, but one, just yours, brighter than ever. Tug and strain, stronger than ever. Until she’s just a pile of herself, resting on top of herself against the leg of the table, without strings. Until the small doctor and the large man come back in and more people wearing scrubs, smoothen her, take her away. Until it’s just you in the room, the sound of the balls of your feet, your toes, without skin on the bottom, sliding squeaky on the bloody floor. Until the strings dance bright as lightning. Still you can’t stop. You feel so good. And you can’t stop. You can’t stop. You haven’t stopped. You feel so good. Or is it the strings that do?
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Very beautiful and very sad. You have a unique voice friend.
Damn