(remixed from “Strawberry,” originally published by X-R-A-Y Aug 12, 2021)

 

And I felt a soft voice taze me: Enter Through! Lifetimes pass.

 

I only felt brief relief in knowing what is impossible. And I dreamt I was back in my childhood backyard.

 

And what they drew from their wells may look like water, but last time I checked water shouldn’t smell like mangy rotten dog dick and have an iridescent shimmer. This is where you go.

 

Bad thought. The area where my face should be is a warped blind spot.

 

Manual. Now I desire only clarity.

 

And as if that thought was a magic spell, I’m in my living room with feet freezing cold and clammy. Henry ventured forward.

 

With the gun in my hand, I roll my wrist like I’m opening a book to point it at my face. Lost in the transiency of spirits who are everactive.

 

It says “Keep going.” All freedom curdles into a demand for sacrifice.

 

I turn around toward the tiny dancing oasis in the sunset, away from Henry. With my knees in the sand and the figure of the figment of Henry eroding in the blowing curtain of sand.

 

Bad thought. I remember this city.

 

I give up and collapse. I shout at Henry, but he doesn’t hear me.

 

As he walks away his footprints immediately filled in with red desert sand. Two door.

 

I’m witnessing my own memories. The further the distance between Henry and me grew, the more I felt a separation not unlike a spirit and a body divorcing.

 

And I realize what I’m really holding onto. I need to be with her again in some form.

 

The city on the dune turned out to be a bunch of whack jobs living in tents in the middle of the desert. And I whip around.

 

The voice chimes and sparkles with dew. I pull him up by the shoulders.

 

Everything past the tree is desolate. The world compresses into a tube-like shape that I am ushered through.

 

Every blemish, every unfolded blanket, every mismatched coffee mug. She’s good.

 

I see a mirage of a tiny dancing city appearing out of red canyons in the distance. There are words written across the middle in her script.

 

I see the EMTs moving a crash test dummy with a wig with hair styled like Henry’s. Paradise.

 

I see him stumble. The moment she left this world I could feel my life being sucked away.

 

The cop takes the crash test dummy and puts it in the trunk of his squad car and leaves. Slouch like a wet towel around the tree’s trunk.

 

I do not exist but I feel like I do. I need to go home.

 

So I drank it a second time. It’s as if I’m walking through the shoot of a playground slide, as if my world is forming around me each step and Longleaf Pines start springing out of the sand dunes until desert and forest are one.

 

Then I shot myself in a scary dream and woke up feeling selfish. A cold wet field damp with sky.

 

Like I forgot something. And it all clicks.

 

 

In the distance I hear the sounds of metallic bone-folding chaos drenched in diesel. Oh God.

 

I let the pages of her journal fall open into my hands. There’s my Golf.

 

The elusive Other being forgotten. He waved me over as he turned around.

 

Iris? … And he does this performative dance piece: falls, then gets up halfway, then slips, then repeat.

 

Irene? … Bad thought.

 

My favorite weather. I have a house here with my wife.

 

Parched and exhausted, I’m following Henry on my hands and knees crawling through the desert. And it starts to rain.

 

I shuffle, barely lifting my feet on the carpet. I remember this.

 

I really … Either he or I were fading away.

 

Ireneiris requested no cosmetic changes to her appearance for her funeral. Past and present tense became one another like water washes water.

 

It was the time of day where the bottom of the sky was a rosy peach neon exploding up above faint magenta. Police car.

 

Paramedics run right past me like I’m not even there. And his tight black hoodie unanchored from his body which was no longer there.

 

I miss her more than I can handle. I must be hallucinating, or dying.

 

I feel lost in my own house. That excitement of combing an expensive rug with your toes.

 

I reach underneath the couch. Borderline orgasm; euphoria.

 

The first time I drank it I passed out. Bad thought.

 

Standing still, I let my body heat melt the water which allows me to acclimate to this terrestrial plain. It feels like someone else’s bad thoughts got planted in my head.

 

My insides wretch at the thought of open casket funerals. And I whip around.

 

I was never alive and never will be dead. The door of the morning mist to the afterbirth of defined things.

 

The memory of the cold dew is sharp on my feet. I don’t know how I can live like this.

 

Henry emerged from behind the tree when everyone else left. It’s like her spirit disintegrated into every corner of every wall in this house.

 

It was an honor and a privilege to love you. Feel for something heavy.

 

And I disassemble at an atomic level clearing the psychic real estate required to lay back and suffer the natural exitance of my natural flesh.

 

Look down.

 

Damn. I try to peek over and see what my younger self looked like but my mind can’t process it.

 

Everything.

 

 

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"Strawberry" was comprised of 220 Sentences. This remix is the rearrangement of the latter 110 sentences via the cut-up method. Read about this method (with photos!) of putting this together here!