the Tulips

Today, you've decided, you're going to try again.

You reach between the lines, slithering between the recesses of the text. You read back to the nexus at which things diverged, slit through the page, and emerge with a pair of tweezers. The shapes of the letters change under your gentle touch: an a becomes an o with a twist of its center. Symbols move around and over the page, juggling over the spine, oozing off the edge of the cover like blood.

A creeping sensation rolls through your mind. As you progress, the sensation turns to pain, then to the creeping flow of a sedative running through your body. Your limp legs collapse, followed by your arms, your torso, and your head. The paperback slams shut by its own forces, as if it had its own agency.

Your bones crush into a powder, as if it was an improperly cut drug. Every juice in your body, your eyes, your brain, your blood, your intestines flatten like a crushed mosquito, as if to press a flower between the lines of the narrative. The darkness around you serves almost as a home, familiar and terrifying in equal parts.

Your soul slips out through a crack of your damaged flesh, and your body takes the shape of a pair of tweezers.

You don't want to let go, do you?

Today, you've decided, you're going to try again.