Wounds without an audience
Like you’re being smashed by a car door that the Hulk removed from a car and then, taking you by surprise as you walked down American Street, swung into you full on, flinging you back a football field.
But did he hit you with the flat end across your face/belly/sex? Or did he swing the edge into your gut?
Hard to say. It feels like somehow both.
And did he let you land upon the far-off sidewalk or get impaled upon some errant twisting rusty rebar? Or did another Hulk leap into the air and catch you broadly on the backside, beginning a lusty, fun-spirited game of swatting you back and forth across the stalling, honking, hazy traffic? Again, somehow both, somehow all those acts of violence wake you up and carry you along into the day.
Who can you tell this to?
There’s no one who can make out what you are saying.
It sounds like a clang to them, the clang of the little red trolley clacking up the track, bending with the good old upward-yearning boulevard, picking up 1950s work-ready commuters from within a short walk of their narrow, three-story brightly-painted sharp-roofed homes, merrily escorting them to the brick and bustle.
You wake up to this more and more lately.
And Hulks attack you with doors more and more. Hatchets too. Doors on all side. Hatchets from just below the neck through the chest, tugging strong and confident into your gut and then slipping beyond, to where bowels give way to hippy longings.
Strange world.
You’d tell someone, but all they hear is the twitter of birds outside the picnic they’re either at or missed or weren’t invited to or skipped or are seriously considering attending.
What can you do?
Go to work, pay rent, politely nod, have a witty shiny moment, tell the darkening muggy you can’t take it anymore–as if it hasn’t heard that before.
You’ll have to drop it all, start over again from the center, pushing out from within.