It is cool and pleasurable in the dark oceans of your mind. Especially pleasurable is my dwelling in that shipwreck which only reaches you by the flotsam that washes up in dreams and chance encounters. My chamber is lighted by three-pronged brass candelabra fixed to the left and right of the door and the series of gilt oval mirrors which extend the glow to the room\u2019s anterior. The light reveals the very basics of my furnishings: a curtained bookshelf, a four-poster bed, a box television set upon a carved chest, a glass fishbowl full of stones. The polished floor reflects this room and the objects inside into a lower dimension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With a delicate pair of opera glasses I see through your eyes. With burgundy opera gloves I touch through your hands. In deep blue inks I write your fatal scripts. You think you choose on a whim to go out at night, to look in yellow windows and long alleys, to decide one more drink couldn\u2019t hurt. All the while, previous misadventures threaten the corners of your thought. The aquarium with the octopus white and glowing like a moon, the theater restroom with faded playbills, the old parlor carpeted in a checkerboard pattern, the observatory under alien constellations. I enjoy in these moments the tingling feeling in the pink webbing between your fingers. I tremble when you say it will never happen again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Symphonies like great cracking glaciers of sound, complex shapes tattooed on the whites of eyes, still life paintings of oxheads and sheep tongues, the pink orchid mantis and her ways in love, angiograms of arteries like neon bonsai, the red bulbs of pitcher plants — you secretly find pleasing what I find pleasing. Mercy, charity, good will towards man — I find intolerable what you think you hold dear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And you wonder how it always ends up like this. A dagger through a face of pale makeup, blood oozing thick and ladybug-red. It is good to feel your tears from this side of your eyes. It is something of a mark of pride that you do not require any prompting to hide the body, steal off with the dagger, scamper down the fire escape and into a neon night. Go on, look in clear ponds and bright shop windows, look into your past, look deep into every mirror you see. You will never find me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
__________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perry Ruhland is the author of <\/em>Invisible Graves (Organ Bank, 2026)<\/a>. His writing has previously been published in<\/em> minor literature[s], <\/em>Vastarien Magazine, and <\/em>ergot.press. He lives in Chicago. Learn more at perryruhland.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"