Dream II: On Certain Relentless Geometries of Life

Persistent and versatile forms. They are little more than tiny wills to live, or tremendous algorithms animating exoskeletons. Somewhere expressed in their equations is the fear of light, a predilection for corners, for edges followed in the night. And wings used only to flee. Panic is accompanied by sensations of floating, or of tightly tucking oneself away in the paper-thin spaces between stones. I wonder at the orgasm of a cockroach, if pheromones are their prime motivator after the recognition of nutritious molecules on their antennae and mandibles, and at the white gushes of guts flailing legs I've stamped out before. My shoe's all mucked up with cockroach again so I wipe it off in a long smear on the floor, legs still jerking as senselessly as my own. I fall asleep soon after and it's crawling all over my face, into my mouth. Teeth mean nothing to this idea of a cockroach. The more desperately I try to chew its life away, the more it regains its form; my teeth unwittingly sculpt its body ever more perfectly until it can scuttle with gusto past the chisels, beyond the protesting tongue to burrow into the soft palate, squirming until safely enveloped on all sides. I wake up as suddenly as if I'd just died, coughing and sputtering on imaginations persisting from the dream, from the damp stain on the floor.