Sunday 27 June 2021

'Fireflies' by Salvatore Difalco

 

You squat in the shadows, watching the movement of shadowy truncated legs. Glue seeping out between planks of hardboard lends the room a ribbed, skeletal quality suggesting a body. The structure breathes. You can hear it breathing. It sweats — behold the ghostly salt stains. Ambiguous in the smooth, creamy light, only your jeweled hairnet betrays your presence; the little glints and flashes when you move your head. When you move your head my eyes follow. Where are the legs going? They seem arbitrary, even nonsensical at first glance, but then again they carry a measure of menace. Shoes and boots clopping across the uneven floor, the whispers, the spent candles — these cause you to recoil. And yet I want so much to know you. I believe we share a vibration, a sensibility. I see us together on a davenport in a parlor filled with sunlight. A train whistles in the distance and we glance at each other, smiling. There is little further background here. The darkly painted walls create at once a sense of enclosure and infinitude. When you move your head I think of fireflies. Can you be persuaded to come out from the shadows? I imagine you effortless, of spiraling grace, wearing a hairnet and delicate gold bracelets. Don’t be frightened. I’m only here to watch. That is to say, in a sense I’m only here to watch. I could say more, but I won’t now. The legs stomp on, unsentimentally. They are headed for the other dream where the other you watches the other me.

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