>flash fiction

Inconceivable Wilson

I step, step go, I have gone. A plane, boats, the walking. This a trip and I exist now having moved my feet until they stopped, step step. A girl in a red dress and hovering over my hands, trickling down me, the inside of me, this woman. I am inside her and lingering back, stumbling. My boots and the heaviness of them, constantly magnetized. I hearken. Her ankles lilting in the light step of strapped black, the swish of material, the heels on hard tile. The heart through the circles of her, the way I broke in, through the clasped hands and the begging off, heart tenderized in their mouths. I eat. I eat. I cannot say enough about my guilt. I have tasted fingers now and the rot of my rotting, the torrent, the problems now I have, strangling. She is maybe waiting for me, picture in her soft tips, the hummingbird vibrations of her hair. That photograph was taken so long ago, before I became so much less. And yesterday I walked and ended up back. And the day before and the day before. I have walked, the rise of no sun and the moonless stretch, my hands pitch thick and blackening on sanded dark fires, they shake. I have walked and always here am back and facing the darkness and their faces again. Bowls of fingers, the fast effects. The waves of fingerless hands, the wailing. Crying in all languages. That image of me, boots for long walking and the jacket a brea ker and a warmth. Here in the always heat, the jacket become a flag, a souvenir, a marker for my already boiling pot. The steam opens my mouth but the words are not there. I do not bloom.

—j. a. tyler