I am the Cobra

Listlessly I wind through a featureless landscape, and the grains beneath me align to no direction. Have I wandered very far? Nothing seems familiar, but everything seems just the same. Lightless suns cast no shadow while I turn endlessly between the looking-glasses that extend this desert into an unconquerable endlessness. A pain pervades me like an indefinable heaviness as if my vertebrae were made of dread.

My fingers dial numbers that once they knew so well:

A: “Help me.”

B: “Again? Where are you?”

A: A some place in this no where, drowning in a puddle of entropy.

A: “A vast expanse of hollow darkness that can swallow the days. I'm lost.”

B: “Enough of the poetics. Look around you. What can you see?”

A: Black clouds are behind me. Was I there? The mirrors are fogged.

A: “There is nothing. Some trees. A line of ugly buildings, identical houses. Unhappy faces. I hurt in a vague way all the time.”

B: “You're being difficult. Tell me landmarks so I can find you.”

A: Nothing remarkable touches my eyes. There were summer days before that loved me and that I loved. Were they like this, or were they different? The air seemed to embrace me then, and I could let it into my bones. Now I feel not-warm; I feel not-cold. I hurt in a vague way all of the time. It seems sharper now. Was I like this all along, or was I different then?

A: “I don't know. Something is out there. Out of frame. Do you understand? It must be insurmountable; nothing comes in.”

B: “No, I don't understand. A mountain? An ocean? A person? An animal? Get it together. You're barely comprehensible.”

A: An ocean of mountain. A lie made of truths. I am a reptilian thing clawing at the porcelain cliffs of an iron tub that crouches like a sphinx: I work patiently at first, but I grow desperate as the hollow darkness of a being forgotten swallows up hours, days, selfs, others, years, memories, youth. Despondent, I cross that featureless desert to the opposite wall again and again wondering as I do if my world has always played at such cruel games. Unhappy faces peer through the mirror from the gray world beyond the misty glass, gazing down to the cool and unmoving floor that hypnotizes with the illusion of a constancy and presses itself deep inside of me.

A: “What can I do but apologize? I dissolved into this.”

B: “Don't apologize. Speak clearly. Fuck, what am I supposed to do?”

A: Could I be the phosphorescence of a candle burned down in the lightless infinity between two mirrors, hurting in the vague way that salt must feel when it dissolves into water? Like the ocean shore on a moonless night, something vast and terrifying seems all around me. It is not-bad, and it is not-good.

A: “No, no, no. Don't get angry. I'm trying.”

B: “You have to try harder! I can't help you when you whisper like this and I can barely hear you. I have told you over and over that I don't want to play your little game anymore.”

A: I was angry before, out of control, driven thoughtless with a sense of betrayal at the pernicious selfishness of this Darwinian individuality. But I am burned out now. Did a great teacher say that a candle should be extinguished? And if it burns too long, rails against the earth, the cloudless sky, or even the sun that seemed to shine sometimes only for its own good? And if it makes everything mundane until nothing contains an ounce of the sacred? Until it contains only meaningless units of nothing? 'An imploded transcendence, you have built a contrapositive nirvana,' that teacher would have said.

A: “I can't try harder. There is a breakage inside, and I hurt in a vague way that is sharp sometimes. I touch the world, and the world feels dull.”

B: “God, don't you want to get better? You're impossible. I've done everything I can for you.”

A: The world became dull some time, and it will not touch me. I beg it sometimes with sobs. On cue, though, a mechanical voice comes from my throat with canned responses and a laughter that sounds tinny in my own head like a cassette copy of a copy of a cassette I played too many times when summer days could still reach me. I turn around every 'Open :)' sign hanging in my windows so that the 'Closed :(' side glares toward me as if the world would not touch me. And I wait inside facing out because a terrifying something not in frame that is not-bad and not-good waits outside facing in for my every misstep. But I have stopped pawing at impossibilities. I lie down on the cool, inert constancy, and it enters me. I struggle to reach behind and grope around in the not-seeing of this lightless place between two mirrors for the automaton string that I must pull harder by exponential factors each time for the phonograph copy canned response.

A: “Don't hang up. Don't hang up. Don't hang up. Don't hang up. Don't hang up.”

B: “You're muttering again! Listen, I'm hanging up. I told you I don't have time for this anymore. Good bye.”

I blink without resolution into the mirror where unhappy faces blink back unfocused from a line of ugly houses and trees that look hungry. Far into the depths of glassy images a factory makes a long line of days that roll along conveyors in absurd and complicated processions. They shatter sometimes, unnoticed and packed too closely together in those windowless acres. A broken thing slithers home.

The closed sign I watch dangling in the window through the colorless reflection works slowly to hem me into this silent inertia. It is the snake charmer, and I am the cobra.

 I obey.