Original writings

Near-blind

I wept the first time I saw a 'photograph' of myself. My brother had pushed through to my presence, his shape swaying politely unlike his voice.
— "This thing shows lies about ourselves!"
— "Lies?"
— "It shows our shapes as if we're up close, everywhere, at the same time!"
— "Like a god, you mean."
— "No, this is make-believe."
Another game. I clucked at him with a dominant gesture, "late for work." and in my smaller voice "jewelry, jewelry..." Ah. The soft composition of D', a bridge, a segue to agreeable others, unreachable by my brother, who lived by his mouth, his hoarse voice tired of all his shape-forming sounds, yet still abrasive towards the shortcuts of the modern world. So why this? This thing.
— "Show me a lie!"
He turned immobile, stone-dead, and shot me! Shot me twice before his shape sprang into life again with laughter like Lazarus. The blood left me, and from my dry throat,
— "So only from deadness can you lie about me?"
— "Or else the lie is blurred and becomes real."
A discordant sound from him, a rude screech like the beggar's bird,
— "No, no, it's the 'photograph box' making the lie right now! It's in my hand."
And I snatched it, and I held it up to an eye, and it was my face like I'd peer into a pool, and it was as bright as a pool is dark, and I saw my clothes as if I held them up close.
—"You can see this without being near me? You can see the thread of my clothes! And my goddamn face!?"
— "It ain't real. It ain't you, it's pretending to be close. The 'box' makes up the most likely visual based on your distanced shape".
A sinking feeling. How can it make up the scar on my hand? Or where I mended my top?
— "How many have you done this to?"
— "C'mon, I wanted to show you, sis, remember our father? How he hid from us by not moving nor making life-sounds? Think this box could have estimated him."
— "I never wanted his estimation, I wanted his presence!"
And in my small voice to comfort him, "you were a boy, it's different..." My tear-sounds came unconsciously, and his presence wobbled awkwardly back and forth, like a perp caught in a soundless panic. Then I am the police. The room-sounds dwindled to just my jewelry, gently signalling my presence.
— "Work. We'll talk later."
Mumbles, mutters and sweat in his wake, abruptly shut off by my door.

"… coming through…"
"… ask another…"
… sing-song hums…
… soft bells and chimes…
… random bleeps…
"… nyaa nyan…"
"… nyan …"
You'd hear anything out on the street. Word of advice? Shun echolalia. Or in this case, pursue it, join the chorus, become the herd. Thus I came disguised near my brother's den, a din of inequity in this disfavored district. I, too, can turn dead, though unwillingly, distant memories of childhood discipline, "Dead girls don't exist!". What is real, though, the sound-blurs or the photograph? The latter is like death, neither movement nor sound, and the dead have no privacy. I am the police, and my brother's keeper, and a non-presence in his home now. I close my eyes and let his private noises invade me and during the long day draw a mental map of eating, sleeping, excitements and safe betweens. When at long last the door shuts him off, I make soft life-sounds again, like a gasp for air after holding my breath for too long, and I can almost feel my mother's hand gently through my hair, "we see with our sounds, dear, that's how we see, make sounds always", and I go to his place of excitement and I open the drawer, and there are papers, and they're all lies! Of me, of people on the street, I can even see their damn faces! The only face I ever want to see is my mother's, or maybe a lover's, if he's of sound heart. Oh, my brother, the violator, the miscreant and malefactor... My tongue won't be still, and I force my fury inside.

Night betrays no shape, just sounds. His slow breath like fumes tickling my chin and the point of the knife finds his throat and my weight falls upon it, my hands all wet like he's moist inside and its every caress brings tears in his skin, how he weeps without sounds! And I smell copper, copper: I am legislated, his plucked eyes like pickled onions in his mouth bring quietus, and I silently fall into shadows, searching for a self that shrank away, and was it ever soundlessly there?

The morning sun escapes its nest and stately crawls high up there on the wall, a glow-worm's belly bulging, bursts with light-drips, oh how deep will it descend? To my brother's bed, and will I dimly see his echo? Leaning in I grab his hand, "We're dead now, both of us, so let me finally see you!"

Kaci, 27.07.2026

 

A madder loss

No-one have ever seen out of their eyes
our daydreams are gently corrected by light
that affectionate granddad who knows all the rules
but never when to break them

— O grandfather, tell why I cannot have
one eye in the forehead and one in the nape?
I yearn to cast rays like the ancient queens
and walk in my cobwebbed thoughts
— O granddaughter, blind yourself! ---------
In your deprivation you may learn to see
to your own heart's desire

I never did know the appearance of birds
I thought they would sing out of envy and rage
an unwanted secret like mouths in our clothes
that talk back at people in their own argot:
Between their attentions the ropes are so dense
I'm saddled with, charged-off, except for my neck

A toad in a tunnel that scrambles the wall
my shadow is too big to eat
It throws itself into a panic that sinks into rock
while abandoning body like Theseus' ship
A liminal warning of wastelands beyond
no ghost bugs to trigger its tongue

I scramble the side of an archaic barrow
the sunset-upset shoves me into a panic
abandoning body I sink into chambers
A liminal promise of unshackled bondage

The arc of a spine curves away from the unfocused
caput of someone outside — hands in lap —
who asserts various points with the skeletal flower
of unfurling folding phalanges

Someone inside
a dead boy in bed
a darling-doll cat
that will dissociate
from its smothering god
Look in his eyes how the quicksilver runs
his predator silence is non-action now
I straddle on top of him
hear the still air
how it punctures the slaps of our flesh
— so he splits —
like I am the ghost that he just won't concede
and the laugh-track for fidgeting hands in his lap
We flicker and fade into scornful flecks
that twist in the wind

The skeletal flower breaks up with a sigh
and half of it nurtures the sacral strain
The other one indicates murmuring stars
that are schooling like sunspots on windswept seas

— O grandfather, tell me, o how can this be?
— O granddaughter, see yourself! ---------
These bats do not screech out of envy nor rage
they swarm to find home in the softest cage.

Kaci, 14.05.2025