léni de la brisa

Dislocation
by léni de la brisa

Truncated, that’s what they diagnosed: “truncated of the soul” and yet these trees stand so tall and grand, judging from above, shaking their canopies in disgruntled creaks, towering over homes without roofs and soulless bipedalists, with bedrooms of fallen branches, my legs rooted to the carpet, you must have been so proud of how big and strong I grew, my leaves so green and plump—rotted guts, hollowed out for insects to steal and decay, my gutted leftovers 

Ah, yes, leftovers tossed in the back of your refrigerator, sealed shut so you don’t see or smell the mold and rot that grew on them, beneath even more sealed boxes of leftovers to be opened, the smell of one breaks out, into your nostrils violates all that is decent, we can’t have that, so you take garbage and smell and toss them all, the innocent, yes, the culprits, guilty by proximity 

Near lunchtime, it’s not that I chose to leave mid-lunch, boiling and animated and smiling, the human fully functional, what is being said is important, but how can my set of bolts and gears understand the intricacies of your spoken word, the great chasm of your heart, maybe it can laugh at the gossip you find so amusing that you wanted to share tonight 

When the key unlocks the front door and I can stop myself from falling into that place, dissipating like water being boiled out of a pot and disappearing from existence, or some frothy concoction spilling over and over, useless like your bowl of soup that spilled down the overused stove, there I am next to the stains from last month’s spaghetti that you forgot to clean when you sliced your finger and, ah, there’s the stain of your blood further down 

Applied yourself, you said you did, then took one look at my wirings and found them faulty, it isn’t that there was an easy way back, tampered and tinkered until food and tree spoiled, and erased the spirit from my body, that must have been your greatest achievement, when the current swept it away and erased misgivings, but with it, I think it was a body dislocated, don’t you remember, when you forgot the feeling of flesh and need, then there was only absence, and the need to fill it, but it’s not so bad, the enemy was your need, there was no need to admit defeat, really, it’s just what happens on cold winter days 

It was cold that day, wasn’t it?