Stasis

The feeling comes like floodwaters dancing down the Mississippi. It surrounds him, pulls him down, holds his head underwater, waiting for him to fight or flee.

He tracks his decision to higher ground where he kneels, reaching for the long steel arms of an unfelt lover he knows well from dream bursts of delivery and dread.

As the engine reaches him, the sound is an April wind or an old Dodge on Main Street or an angry semi on the interstate. When it reaches him he is doubled over like a rag on a tightrope—he is an ancient nag hacking up Maddog and blood as deep as an overcast night, as sour as grain rooting in a field full of flood.

When it reaches him it feels like a debt collector, like a drought in July or June, like thin skin frying in a skillet, the fat stores snapping against the last drops of water. It feels as sleek as a storm as fake as a funeral arrangement or forecast, like the meeting of now and never, like the clash of a single-celled contradiction.

When it reaches him it looks empty as its essence evaporates into hot waves of autumn air swimming toward the sun, leaving nothing but thought-shadows lurking behind walls of white clouds cast against a crayon blue sky.

When it reaches him the lovely monster moans, the sound of the whistle is silence absorbed by the scream of steel scraping against itself, the slick metal shines cold, then turns hot as fast as rolling numbers on a filling station board, as fast as a bucket of luck tossed into the air.

It smells like progress, like passion faded into a leathery prune, like oil, like life or death.

Hacking, his mind calculates losses and gains and losses and probabilities and speculates the likelihood of luck or lack of luck, the use of steel horseshoes and four-leafed clovers. Pros and cons swirl in a twister pushing out on, then spiraling toward the core of his tired skull.

The blind eye appears blank behind the socket. He cannot connect to an empty current. He is no fawn, no squirrel, not a nut.

As the hind feet of road kill kick his bleeding mouth, he rolls away from peace, away from the snorting engine, away from leisure, into a bank where one season’s grass grows through that of another. Snake eyes staring at him, he slithers through his choice, up the hill to his rusty pickup, his own denial already growing discontent.