now there’s sores; and blood; and scars; and I’m green inside
sometimes, if I cut m yself something green comes out, as if
I’m getting green blood which I never heard o f before but they
keep things from you; it could be that if you get so many bad
cuts body and soul your blood changes; from scarlet to a dank
green, an awful green; some chartreuse, some Irish, but
mostly it is morbid, a rotting green; it’s a sad story as I am an
old-fashioned human being who had a few dreams; I liked
books and I would have enjoyed a cup o f coffee with Camus in
m y younger days, at a cafe in Paris, outside, w e’d watch the
people walk by, and I would have explained that his ideas
about suicide were in some sense naive, ahistorical, that no
philosopher could afford to ignore incest, or, as I would have
it, the story o f man, and remain credible; I wanted a pretty
whisper, by which I mean a lover’s whisper, by which I mean
that I could say sweet things in a man’s ear and he’d be thrilled
and kind, I’d whisper and it’d be like making love, an embrace
that would chill his blood and boil it, his skin’d be wild, all
nerves, all smitten, it’d be my mark on him, a gentle mark but
no one’d match it, just one whisper, the kind that makes you
shiver body and soul, and it’d just brush over his ear. I wanted
hips you could balance the weight o f the world on, and I’d
shake and it’d move; in Tanzania it’d rumble. I wanted some
words; o f beauty; o f power; o f truth; simple words; ones you
could write down; to say some things that happened, in a
simple way; but the words didn’t exist, and I couldn’t make
them up, or I wasn’t smart enough to find them, or the parts o f
them I had or I found got tangled up, because I couldn’t
remember, a lot disappeared, you’d figure it would be
impressed on you if it was bad enough or hard enough but if
there’s nothing but fire it’s hard to remember some particular
flame on some particular day; and I lived in fire, the element; a
Dresden, metaphysically speaking; a condition; a circum-
stance; in time, tangential to space; I stepped out, into fire. Fire
burns m em ory clean; or the heart; it burns the heart clean; or
there’s scorched earth, a dead geography, burned bare; I
stepped out, into fire, or its aftermath; burnt earth; a dry, hard
place. I was born in blood and I stepped out, into fire; and I
burned; a girl, burning; the flesh becomes translucent and the
bones show through the fire. The cement was hot, as if flames
grew in it, trees o f fire; it was hot where they threw you down;
hot and orange; how am I supposed to remember which flame,
on which day, or what his name was, or how he did it, or what
he said, or w hy, if I ever knew; I don’t remember knowing.
O r even if, at some point; really, even if. I lived in urban flame.
There was the flat earth, for us gray, hard, cement; and it
burned. I saw pictures o f woods in books; we had great flames
stretching up into the sky and swaying; m oving; dancing; the
