Acetylene in the eye. Bursts of it, although it wouldn’t matter after the first burst because there wouldn’t be an eye.
There isn’t, in fact, an eye. Not one to be seen. There isn’t, in fact, a body part. Not one to be seen. There’s a body though. Not one but several bodies. But not one body part.
What could this condition be?
Think about it.
I am inside my body, as you can probably see, but I am probably no longer alive. Is that something you can understand? That’s the tough part, especially these days; making people understand, conveying to them in a way that they will become cognisant, your condition, the way you are. Possessed of a body, but not alive. And yet, and yet able to articulate this absurd dissonance.
Why am I to tell you, though? Why may I even be interested? You are the one that killed me and put me here, in this bandaged bag of a body. Look at me. I am even trying to move, assume a posture. What audacity, you must think. Yes. Correct. What audacity! I am that thing, you have forced me to become that thing: audacity. If I am not audacity, I am nothing. You want me to be nothing, I do know, but I have become audacity and I shall accordingly act.
I shall not be put away. Look at me, does it appear like I can be put away? Beat me, slam me, twist me, tape me, bind me up and throw me. I am still me. And I am here. Here in a body, not knowing whether I am alive or dead.
I can become shapes. I can become shades. I can become this and that. I can bend and pull and stretch. I am a body. I am me. Just now certain I am alive. Even though I am thinking and speaking and talking and writing and being lucid as hell, where may I be, who knows? Do you know? Can you tell me where I am? Can you tell me where you put me? Is this hell? Whatever or wherever it is, I am here. Not alive but alive enough. You know what I mean. You left me in this state. You could not kill me. So you left me not alive but alive enough. I know that state even though you may not; I know because I have been put in that state. Put inside a body, dead or alive. Or both. How does it really matter which? Someday come to my exhibit.
Look at me once, oh please do
Before you resolve to be gone
I am one of you, not from any zoo
I am your darkness, not your dawn.