Contagion and the Dinner GuestBy Sakina B. Fakhri
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"Fluids, honey. Just take lots of fluids and the fever should pass quite soon," my mother told me as she made preparations for my gravestone. Or was it dinner? I can't remember. That time in my life, I believe, was very linear. I'm afraid it's tough to return to that time to relive the incident and explain to you the truth of the phone call—you know, many have been caught in linear time and I have lost friends in the predictability of that sprinting racetrack. I can't go back, not yet. I am enjoying myself far too much, and I can feel far too readily here in my web.
"Sweetie, how would you feel about flowers?"
"Flowers?!" The chlorophyll enveloped me as I chanted through the daisy-lined boulevard. The chlorophyll...it wasn't right, that construction was incorrect, that image unimagined. Now that I think of it, it was not chlorophyll at all. The redness ate me. That's what I meant. Yes, certainly. The redness devoured me! "Sure, mother. Flowers would be delicious."
"All right. Get in the tub, I'll unwrap your soap."
"Oh."
"Can you turn the water on, honey?"
"Oh."
***
"I think I'll take the lilacs," I had said to the man behind the counter. I apologize, I've become wrapped up in my own business, once again. Sensory perceptions held a specific flair for me, at one time, and flowers served as decorative halos to my hell. Rocky Road's bed in the sky long forgotten (remind me to put in a request for a habitable nook, just something quaint and simple), I yearned for those living green canals of flowers that needed water just as much as I did.
I've got it! The truth of the phone call has arrested me, at last. It was relating to my graveyard, my gravestone, and the flowers my mother was to put upon it. The dinner table decor was but a faint memory in the eyes and ears of those guests that coughed up the phlegm that sent me to my encroaching darkness.
They asked for water. What was I to do? I handed Ms. Road the nubile substance, thinking nothing of her son whose life I had taken a hand in dissipating. The drops converged as they formed a cohesive fluid.
The bonds of hydrogen—you think nothing of them, I know, simply something encompassing more than 400 kJ of energy, a fact in a book—but to me they are the lifeblood of my form. Without the bonds my soul would slip out from beneath the crevices created as I dodged the maddening chisels.
They spoke of blood. Ties of blood, only, they spoke of. Heritage has always intrigued me, as those connected by it form an in-group, and those excluded stand in the cold, peering into the vampire feast, as did Tiny Tim's apparition in a not-nearly-popular-enough television show . Ah, but that sentence has meandered far from its original direction. Let us try again—the linearity that your inferior comprehension imposes upon me is a trying challenge. Such emotions cannot be expressed through the labels with which you have provided me.
"Governmental dissent is something with which I will not put up." England was a beautiful country, until nighttime arrived, and all predictions were shattered. Ah, but I digress, issues of grammar have once again led me astray from my point.
Ms. Road was a respectable woman. I found no fault within her, nor without. She was but an emerald without blemish. A flawless stone could boast no clarity lacking in Ms. Road. She came over for dinner, and thenceforth I admired. My mother sent me to my gravestone, however (for adults often find children menial tasks to keep them absent from important conversations), and it is a cardinal sin to refuse yourself attendance at your own gravesite. Very well knowing this, my mother separated those brilliant stems! Torn asunder, the thorns screamed to each other, their spirits frantically jumped and blundered! The color blurred, as it transferred its energy, then finding a vessel previously filled, returned their vibrancy to their rightful homes! No essence can be separated, no essence at all would succeed! It was that they must succeed apart...a bouquet BROKEN!
I carried those dejected members of the well-knit family away from the vase at the dinner table. Had they blood, no ties could have saved them. They were destined, of my mother's unthinking hand, to be carried between my ghostlike fingers and to wither upon a slab of concrete in eternal deliverance to the memory of my body.
There they still lay, if one were to go back now to the time at which they were lain—forever young .
***
What made the colors of those flowers shift against their natural burdens, wither and wane, you may wonder, as any thoughtful being thoughtfully would. The reflection of the blood that would seethe through her very veins preceded the action. The moment before life--the moment after. The passivity? There is no action but deference to preexisting actions, so is not all action truly acquiescence?
I am unraveling, I can feel it... linearity can contain this narrative no longer!
But, one by one, the patients are shuffled into their final spaces, all limbs and faces.
"Is this the right room?" they think, hoping they have met their fate correctly, for what a tragedy to meet the wrong one!
"Sweetie, how would you feel about flowers?"
"Flowers?!" The chlorophyll enveloped me as I chanted through the daisy-lined boulevard. The chlorophyll...it wasn't right, that construction was incorrect, that image unimagined. Now that I think of it, it was not chlorophyll at all. The redness ate me. That's what I meant. Yes, certainly. The redness devoured me! "Sure, mother. Flowers would be delicious."
"All right. Get in the tub, I'll unwrap your soap."
"Oh."
"Can you turn the water on, honey?"
"Oh."
***
"I think I'll take the lilacs," I had said to the man behind the counter. I apologize, I've become wrapped up in my own business, once again. Sensory perceptions held a specific flair for me, at one time, and flowers served as decorative halos to my hell. Rocky Road's bed in the sky long forgotten (remind me to put in a request for a habitable nook, just something quaint and simple), I yearned for those living green canals of flowers that needed water just as much as I did.
I've got it! The truth of the phone call has arrested me, at last. It was relating to my graveyard, my gravestone, and the flowers my mother was to put upon it. The dinner table decor was but a faint memory in the eyes and ears of those guests that coughed up the phlegm that sent me to my encroaching darkness.
They asked for water. What was I to do? I handed Ms. Road the nubile substance, thinking nothing of her son whose life I had taken a hand in dissipating. The drops converged as they formed a cohesive fluid.
The bonds of hydrogen—you think nothing of them, I know, simply something encompassing more than 400 kJ of energy, a fact in a book—but to me they are the lifeblood of my form. Without the bonds my soul would slip out from beneath the crevices created as I dodged the maddening chisels.
They spoke of blood. Ties of blood, only, they spoke of. Heritage has always intrigued me, as those connected by it form an in-group, and those excluded stand in the cold, peering into the vampire feast, as did Tiny Tim's apparition in a not-nearly-popular-enough television show . Ah, but that sentence has meandered far from its original direction. Let us try again—the linearity that your inferior comprehension imposes upon me is a trying challenge. Such emotions cannot be expressed through the labels with which you have provided me.
"Governmental dissent is something with which I will not put up." England was a beautiful country, until nighttime arrived, and all predictions were shattered. Ah, but I digress, issues of grammar have once again led me astray from my point.
Ms. Road was a respectable woman. I found no fault within her, nor without. She was but an emerald without blemish. A flawless stone could boast no clarity lacking in Ms. Road. She came over for dinner, and thenceforth I admired. My mother sent me to my gravestone, however (for adults often find children menial tasks to keep them absent from important conversations), and it is a cardinal sin to refuse yourself attendance at your own gravesite. Very well knowing this, my mother separated those brilliant stems! Torn asunder, the thorns screamed to each other, their spirits frantically jumped and blundered! The color blurred, as it transferred its energy, then finding a vessel previously filled, returned their vibrancy to their rightful homes! No essence can be separated, no essence at all would succeed! It was that they must succeed apart...a bouquet BROKEN!
I carried those dejected members of the well-knit family away from the vase at the dinner table. Had they blood, no ties could have saved them. They were destined, of my mother's unthinking hand, to be carried between my ghostlike fingers and to wither upon a slab of concrete in eternal deliverance to the memory of my body.
There they still lay, if one were to go back now to the time at which they were lain—forever young .
***
What made the colors of those flowers shift against their natural burdens, wither and wane, you may wonder, as any thoughtful being thoughtfully would. The reflection of the blood that would seethe through her very veins preceded the action. The moment before life--the moment after. The passivity? There is no action but deference to preexisting actions, so is not all action truly acquiescence?
I am unraveling, I can feel it... linearity can contain this narrative no longer!
But, one by one, the patients are shuffled into their final spaces, all limbs and faces.
"Is this the right room?" they think, hoping they have met their fate correctly, for what a tragedy to meet the wrong one!