Against a wall bodies before they are cast about to land where they will lie and cover and cover coverings for what lies underneath has done nothing but lie there atop the lack of beginning no beginning. Here is where living where living is done and it is done to lie about where bodies land and where they lie for lifetimes of lying and covering things and covering the coverings that lie atop the lack of beginning no beginning whatsoever.
Against it the only thing these bodies can remain against now before they are cast about to land where they will lie stand these bodies. Something a wind maybe winds do that can do that may have possibly removed a blindfold and it only takes one to start the whole miserable business of vision. And the one removes another blindfold.
Body #1: Allow me. There. How's that? Better, right?
Body #2: Crap. Must have an eye infection or something the strain where one of its most insidious characteristics is a painful sensitivity to light.
Body #1: The Sun is sinking. The day is just about over. We've missed another one. We are too late for what has happened while we have been like this. I should remove theirs.
(As they reach to remove the blindfold from the third body standing, the second raises their arms to stop them).
Body #2: Don't do more of that routine.
Body #1: What routine? I'm attempting to undo the way things have been.
Body #2: Don't do more of your routine of blinding people while acting as if their permission matters to you.
Body #1: Blinding? I'm doing the opposite. Has the darkness gotten to you?
Body #2: Perhaps. Bandages are thin layers between one darkness and another.
Body #1: You've confirmed it for me at least that it might take longer for you to adjust to the light than others.
Body #2: That sounds familiar. Where have I heard that one before? However many shoulders I have been flung over and wherever I have landed I can still hear things the same old messages and directions as the images become both more vivid and murkier.
Body #1: I prefer what's out here to what's in my head and especially what lurks about in yours. Now let me take their blindfold off.
Body #2: They're not interested anyway.
Body #1: Really? What makes you so sure?
Body #2: They haven't bothered to interject.
Body #1: They are probably just being polite.
Body #2: So much for politeness and the thickness of its dam to hold back the flood of questions and interjections. Not a stirring of waves or even a leak. Just politeness and its gauze to soak in the bleeding of resignation. Have I told you the story about the woman the mother the secretary who wanted to quit as her options evaporated up into the clouds that hung over her. Her vision became blurred and she visited the eye doctor who told her the story about the man who read book after book to amass an ever expanding range of mountains of information as his hearing failed and missed the requests of those who wanted to share in the climbing and discovering of the various places the corners the plateaus and steep drops among the mountains. The woman followed prescription after prescription until everything about her the clouds that moved heavily and imperceptibly above her everything lost its contrast.
Body #1: No gratitude. That's your problem. Now let me remove their blindfold.
Body #2: Wait until tomorrow. We are too late for another day and what has happened unseen without us. You're one to be so easily persuaded aren't you? Persuaded by the wind. I heard it. Isn't that what started it? So moved you are and inspired to make everyone else like you.
Body #1: You want us all to stay like you and be like you? Blind? And willfully ignorant?
Body #2: No. Just unwilling to keep watching again. Just when I was getting used to no longer watching it starts again the watching and the looking and the searching around in the layout the floor plan we can navigate with our eyes shut and now we get to play a pointless variation of the game where we pretend we're not hostages anymore. If you want to take her blindfold off at least put mine back on before I forget the rest of it the rest I used to have before my hearing overwhelmed my sense of touch to touch and be touched and still had a grip. Its loosening the wind you and the rest along the wall loosening the grip unraveling as it reminds me of all the loops they made around this body rotating and orbiting like a foreign body an alien planet lifeless to preserve in its motionless resolve until they deliver us to another land another floor plan we'll strain to hear for clues of how to follow their directions unseen another land where they will carry as their unwanted burden and throw us and cast us into some other scene where we will land where the wrapping on the outside will contain the bleeding of resignation and the looping of thoughts inside our heads this head where the dark things lurk about in the dark at the end of the day having just missed what happened before unseen and without us.
- Max Stoltenberg
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