Metaphors I’m beginning to think that they’ve all been used before. The fireworks of the neurons that fire in your brain, the hands that flutter like wings and crack like bark, even the stars that shine in your eyes. Everything new is ridiculous. Should I say, your hands are flapping like carp drowning when someone reaches down to pull them into the air? That the fine lines on them are like tin foil that, once used, can never be smoothed out again? Maybe these metaphors work, somehow, maybe they’re just nonsense: your eyes are like the power indicator on my tv antenna. Controlled by a little plastic dial? Bright and surrounded by darkness? Keeping me awake at night? It all falls apart. There’s nothing else to say but this: There is a man. He looks sad. I saw him, lying in his white bed. When I saw his eyes, I thought, he must know something awful. But after all, I am no closer to it, I will never be any closer to him, than this.
Originally published in Ruminate magazine, Spring 2014
