Things You Need in the Dark

Things you need in the dark:

A flashlight. Yours is broken.

Warm clothes. You are naked.

Spatial sense. You are disoriented. This will not get better.

A hand to hold. Take this one, the flesh is gone but the bones are strong.

The flashlight and warm clothes are not forthcoming. Take the bone hand, then, and let it guide you. Feel the damp leaves beneath your feet and the soft dirt sticking to your skin. Revel in the goosebumps and the shivering flesh - sensations offering proof of the reality of your environment. That is, the dark. That is, the bones walking next to you. It doesn't matter that you can't see the shape of the bones; the fossilized hand clasping yours is enough. Even as your eyes adjust, you can't make anything out beyond vague shapes determined by differing shades of the dark.

Things you need in the dark: a guide.

It's getting warmer now, even though you cannot see any light. The heat is all around you. Perhaps you are somewhere swampy - that would explain the soft ground. Yet it does not smell swampy; you can't smell anything. Is your sense of smell restricted or are you walking through odorless space? There are no insects. The bony hand tightens its grip, sharp edges cutting into your hand like splintered wicker.

Your guide stops. You stop. A second hand grips your shoulder. This hand too lacks the softness of skin. Bone though it may be, there is nothing fragile about it. The grip on your shoulder is firm. You wonder if you might start to move again. Both hands drop from your body for a moment, only to reappear in new places. In many places.

The hands weave you into a new shape.

Braided like a rope. Twisted tight. Pulled on both ends, you do not snap. Meat is squeezed out, bone splintered. Knotted and coiled, unwound and coiled again. Still you do not break. You feel everything but can see nothing, your eyes full of splinters. You had no idea your body hid so many spaces. You had no idea you were so big.

The sound of water. A beach somewhere, grit in your throat. In your new shape you slither through the sand, leaving curled trails to be washed away by the incoming tide. So very cold, your skin more sensitive than before, defenseless against the icy wind. You push ahead, driven by a need to keep moving, to generate warmth even as the sand drills into the cracks and crevices. Some part of you cries but you don't know where it's located. Keep dragging through the sand.

The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying-glass available. If only it were not so dark.

Nothing is ever whole. Why do we pretend it is? We are made of fragments. These fragments do not cohere into a whole. They never have and they never will. Why do we insist otherwise?

Here is a piece of my skin, separated from my cheek. Here is a patch of hair from the back of your head. Here are four toes from your youngest child and three fingers from your oldest. Here is a torso found in the slums. Here is a knee from the grocery aisle floor. Here is a piece of inner thigh, found at a gun show. Here is an arm, found outside of a safe space. Here are a pair of eyes, forgotten beneath the bed. Put it all together. It's still not whole. It's the best any of us can do, and the best is an abomination. The best is a damp pillowcase and a canyon between each outpost.

This is why cults thrive. This why the guru is groovy. This is why people go to church. And it never works. Glue, tape, adhesives of any kind--all have a breaking point. Welds weaken in time. All organic matter rots. All matter is organic. All matter exists in darkness.

Things the dark needs: you.