j.a. tyler

Inconceivable Wilson

We teach because we want people to know, to follow us, to be a mirror, stumbling blindly in our wake. We trail. We want fingers of people following us, lingering in our shreds, attempting discovery in our footprints, our bones. They pulverize bones and drink them in warm water, the solution of trees cut and carved out, the insides. I am inside. It is a collection of scenarios, these environments, the places they exist, these people I have found who were, until I mentioned them in my whispers, in my sleep, without. And here, under palms and in desert, where the trees change from Serengeti to pine forest, these people wash my outsides with their blackness. I remain moon-white. The last plane was a bi-plane or something wooden, the wheels not wheels at all but floats that somehow touched earth with a wind. I became a spot on a speck of light that was diminishing circles. Everything circling. I was nauseous and dizzy, forthright in my fear, dipping into my own panic. I blacked out and was resuscitated by careless pilot lips that kissed before blowing back out. I was arrived. Planes boats and the way in. The last set, the final line before I broke, made the center, them, they in their last line locked arms, elbows as shields, knees as spears, guarding me out, boxing. They were not protecting the inside, they were protecting me. I did not listen. I never listen. I wanted the center. I made the center. I am the center.