Twisted Lullaby I-V
palimpsest, cosmogony, other words (quite a few)
I
I run after the clouds, and they run after me. We run together, neither falling behind. The sun must be hiding behind them, the sun loves to hide, it's quite good at hiding, it hides every night. Night and day are alike now. They're just like litle brother and litle sister. Like you and me. The clouds are black, thick, heavy, hanging all the way to the ground like an old holey hammock or a thick net. Mosquitoes get stuck in nets, and in clouds, sunbeams get stuck, in clouds, we get stuck. Aren't you cold, little brother? Don't be scared, we're almost there. Your eyes are as blue as the sky, which can't be seen when the sun is hiding, and it's always hiding. I know, even though I can't see it, that the sea is just as blue as your eyes. Fish swim in the sea, wiggling their tails, splashing about. Jellyfish swim in the sea too, they are poisonous and don't splash at all. If you touch them, or if they touch you, your skin will peel off and you'll be left with nothing at all, not even "skin and bones," but maybe just "only bones." I don't know what would happen if a jellyfish touched a bone—children's books don't write about such things, and grown-up ones probably don't either, because maybe nothing would be left. It would be super cool to check, but not on yourself; they say you don't show or test on yourself, although really you always end up showing and testing everything on yourself, and learning to fall without it hurting, and learning to walk so you don't fall, and finding a way through the forest so you don't get lost, and getting lost in a way that you don't fall and it doesn't hurt and you can keep going, because otherwise you'll fall on your knees, scrape your skin, as if the whole earth were covered in jellyfish, and then it hurts to walk, just like that, even when you're not falling, because you've already fallen recently, and your knees are now all scraped up and bruised, and they ache and sting. Your eyes also sting from the smoke, like, probably, from sea salt in seawater, so it feels like you want to cry for no reason, but tears themselves are salty, like seawater, but they don't sting. First something stings, and then they run. Smoke makes your nose sting and your tongue bitter, but your skin feels nothing, absolutely nothing, no stinging, no pain, it just gets a bit darker, but maybe that's just how it seems, or rather, how it "feels," just like with the sun—you can't see it, but you "feel" it setting, rising, going round and round us, throwing its rays on your skin, which makes it tan—magic! And if you tan too much, it'll sting, just like from a jellyfish, as if the rays and the sun itself are also made of jellyfish, like everything else.
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