I had a dream about my brother's jet engines.

Captivity

It was a week before I realized I wasn’t alone.

I was dragged from the cell late one night and strapped to a cool steel table. The attendants all had tattoos on their arms--black glyphs of some nature.

Across from me in a dentist chair was the man I’d seen yelling at his baby on the train. How long ago had I seen him? It hasn’t been long now? Or has it?

The man was gagged. Some intravenous prink drip was trailing out of his left arm. One of the man’s eyes had been removed. He was slouched over. He had to be unconscious, but I thought I saw his still live eye flash towards me once.  

One of the tattooed men stuck me with a needle. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d been drugged since capture. No point in panicking now. 

Captivity

I cried myself to sleep. Koenma is watching. The river is listening.

When I woke up again there was light coming from the steel doggy door.

I scuttled over to it.  Ate what they’d left. My head still hurt.

The circumstances of my kidnapping don’t make sense. I'd been on the train. I’d been watching a family and crying baby. I must have fallen asleep.

There are strange markings on my skin. I can’t tell what color they are in the dark. My fingernails are so long.

I want to bite them but there’s something wrong with my teeth. I think I have something pointy growing behind my teeth. I’m panicking. What’s happening to me?  

Captivity

I woke up in the dark. I’d forgotten what happened.

I was captive. I’d been on the train--every day on the train--back and forth. I could trace the route with my finger. The bends, the bridges, the tunnels, the nauseating closeness to the other cell mates.

Hermetically sealed uniforms filling the factory conduits: pink-red to packing, light blue to redistribution, cream to assembly, and us whites to the labs.

Little white light bulbs with disposable plastic gloves and carcinogenic chemicals. 

Mugger Blues

You spend your life in clouds. Days pass by. 

And one night,

You fall asleep on the train home from work.

And it's a new dream. 

A waking dream--an awake dream--a dream that makes life 


seem little more than a blurry 

two hour nap.

And they'll ask you.

Was there, 

brown-green metallic light irradiating the wood beyond the 


factory fences?

And now,

is there an odd cough or the unexplained bruise?

Think nothing of it I say.

You look fine to me.  

On break

            On the way to work today something alarming happened.

I was on the subway. I was watching one of those historical documentary TV ads. It was early. The cabs weren’t too crowded yet.

There was a pretty woman holding a baby--and beside her, an out of the ordinary looking man shouting at a slightly older, slightly less pretty version of the woman with the baby.

This continued for a moment and was mildly annoying.

Bump, bump, bump. The subway was getting busier. Bump, bump, bump. Whether it was from the annoying argument or the unpleasant ride, I can’t say, but that baby burst out crying as if in pain.

The shrieks dulled the senses of everyone in the cab. All eyes watched. It became clear to me that the man and women weren’t from around here. I could hardly tell what they were saying.

The man began screaming at the baby for a time. I couldn’t tell what he was saying at all though. It was uncomfortable to watch. The woman who held the baby eventually got him to stop.

When I got off the subway I lost myself in work.      

Clinophobia is the fear of beds

       Chaka took Ray and I to her parent’s house for vacation. They live to the south in a small place. We stayed two days then came back to the city.

Ray took this picture of me at the train station on the way home. He tried too hard to get me to smile. Ray is funny like that. Chaka and I don’t talk about him much. Her parents made Ray sleep by himself.

Chaka says I talk in my sleep. She says she caught me mumbling something that sounded like; “swan meridian,” whatever that means. I can never remember my dreams.

  

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