A Season in Hell X
Gradually the meds start to work. Now there’s the sobbing to do, barfing out the pain. Merciless, God is merciless, has eyes in the back of his head just like Mother did. She was always watching me with the eyes in the back of her head and now the back of my head is riddled with nails.
I crawl out from under the vanity. Debilitated, I can’t do a thing. Not a thing. I am a ravaged woman, a haunted woman. Outside, I believe there is an outside somewhere, but I am afraid of that black sack, that it might come back and what can a woman do with nails in her head? Dead low tide. Okay, I got that right, looked out the window without lifting my head. Dead low tide and my life, too, is at dead low tide. Ebbing, ebbing slowly away, sob by sob. 3:28. 3:29. I can record the time and it is passing on as I am passing, an impermanent dream. That’s the Buddhist concept: all phenomena are but an impermanent dream which makes—does it really?—my madness an impermanent dream. It’s awful just plain awful being a phenomenon of impermanence and who can live with an impermanent brain?
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