Burn My Knees

Distorted eyes, when everything is clearly dying
Burn my knees and
Burn my knees and pray

When he hit a switch, the lights flickered, then illuminated the room.

Just like that. With a flick of the hand, the problem was fixed. Amazing, truly wonderful technology. Wouldn’t it be grand if everything were solved in this fashion? Darkness - click - light. No more pain. The fantasy pleased him.

His mind wandered back to something his therapist had told him - something about establishing a reality for himself. Learn to live in this world. Face your true fears.

He had picked up a paperweight from the desk and thrown it, gauging out a small spot above the therapist’s left eye.

In the sitting room, lighted with all the wonders of instant electricity, he sat down in the middle of the rug on the floor. He was swimming in the folded and crumpled papers that covered it like a blanket, each one scrawled with words and lines almost indistinguishable from one another. “black twisted [crossed out] tangled heart/maybe.../maybe.../ maybe...” said one. “I’ll just bring you down [crossed out] I’m just the kind to bring you down” said another.

He picked up a scrap of notebook paper and read what was on it.

“Distorted eyes, when everything is clearly dying...”

That was as far as he had gotten. He had tried to continue this particular poem many times, but the words just wouldn’t come. It almost seemed as if he had nothing more to say. But he knew that couldn’t be true. The pain was still there, as cold and ruthless as ever, staring him in the face every morning and in every restless sleep. It was the reason he couldn’t wake up; it was the reason he couldn’t go to bed. I’ll just sit awake all night, he thought to himself, so nothing can ever reach me.

His eyes fell on the darkened windows. This was always the worst time. The beast of night loomed and chased him into this room, always, where he could watch it from all sides. He could hear its heavy panting, and smell the stink of its musty breath.

Yesterday he had lit a match and stared at the flame for so long that it started to lick his hand. He had dropped the match eventually, feeling a painful hot tingling in his fingers. Part of the rug where the match had landed caught fire. Frantic, he yelled “FIRE! Fire!” The other tenants who had heard and come rapping on the door were not let in. Their knocks were not received in his spinning, churning mind.

Later he put the fire out with water from the sink. A charred black spot remained on the rug.

It was a warm April night, and he was cold. He hadn’t felt warm for a long time. His bones and teeth rattled. A breeze blew in from an open window.

The breeze seemed to stir something in him, scattering a group of embers in his body which in turn began to smoke and crackle.

“Fire!” his mind shrieked. “Fire!” For a moment he thought he might indeed cry out.

You know what happened to the boy who cried wolf...

The fiery pain consumed his mind in a dark fury. All that escaped his lips was a dry moan.

Please God, Please God...oh please...

The bathroom was down the hall. He had to run, he had to reach the water in time to douse his mind and body - for the brush had caught in the wind of his suffering, and it was burning. The sudden salty wetness around his eyes, burning, his dry mouth and parched tongue, his chest and elbows and knees, every little thing down to the soft flesh of his feet, burning, burning...


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