Lines

Projection

I found him there under the flood's surface

He was simple, hurt, he looked at me at first in fear

Or perhaps a cold indifference, unable to truly see me

Like a beetle sees a root, or a bird sees stone

I didn't register in his eyes, but still I pulled him up

His gasps were pitiful and weak, he was under for years

Sputtering and shaky life restoring itself in his blood

The flood's hold ebbed little by little

I saw a man dead in the brick maze, or perhaps that was my father

The drowned man was not a corpse though

His eyes still scanned, pondered, observed

Observed

He held me in his gaze for a while

Possibly because he registered I saved him

Perhaps because I could be his next meal

I pictured his teeth sinking into me, deeper and into endless forever

Is it fate or eternity that spins the parabola?

Was that my father in the maze?

The man stood at his full height and nodded at me

"You speak?"

"Nay."

The contradiction lingered in my mind for the rest of my life

But in the present I observed him now

Tall and proud, but also a child, hapless, apathetic, absurd

He was an abstraction of us all

Perhaps he was never that at all, and my own thoughts brought him

A coalescence of my own making

My father was in the maze. My father was dead in the maze

The man started to walk but realized he did not know where to go

I saw his certainty immediately depart his footing

He wobbled and swayed, and then he looked at me

His eyes held a new hue, one of cognizance

It did not suit him

It did not suit me

I killed my father in the maze

And I killed the man too

I pushed him back into the flood's maw

The waters took him and he sunk down into its depths

I saw his face, still looking at mine, as he drifted into nothing

The beetle eyes still met mine

Was he dead the whole time?

No, I saw those eyes change

I saw his eyes change when I pulled him out

He would use me for his gain like any other

Like my father before him

And just then without realizing it

I blinked and was a child again on the swings near home

Swinging from his push

Father was on the phone, work call

But he still had a hand to push me

He always kept one hand free for me

The maze of bricks is not actually there

A desert or a jungle, it is made of concrete and stone

Piled on one another and made tall

Its own Tower of Babbel, it represents what we used to be

It represents me as I drift alone alongside the floodlands

It is not truly brick, but it stands forever tall

Artificial and yet so certain in its step

Only it's not stepping at all, that's just the illusion it makes

As I walk away from it

I can't look at it anymore, I know his face is still there

Father's face still looks at me from the center of the maze

His eyes follow me despite the skull and flesh rotting away for years

But the man in the depths now does not blink

He still stares at me all the same

They all watch me, they never stop watching me

I run now, away

Somewhere new, neither flood nor concrete concept

I find myself in the forests of my youth

Evergreens and willows and brush that sways

Limp suggestions that the world is not yet dead

I see myself there like always

Hanging in the trees

Gasping, choking, dying

My feet go limp at last and I am free