The vertigo of present time

Snail breath is pushing down the throat of the woman in a room where green light shines staggering through the late summer leaves. She is sitting on a chair, rocking on the square seat that will not move with her undulations as she cannot move from her memories or the air that suffocates around her. Her breath echoes the puff the owl's wings made flying overhead. But that was last night in its cool in its thick in its root blue of moon and she remembers the talons sharp points. Blade at her throat, the cool of metal a rough crush of her ribs. Where did he come from those whiskers rough on her jaw, those rancid huffs of breath. No time to think of why or who, only the instant reflex of do anything not to feel the lava of her own blood.

This morning the shimmer of pavement radiated reflections of the sun but when she closed her eyes all she saw were the skeleton branches of the tree he pulled her under and the white globes of his eyes. She felt cooked in the oven of her four doors slammed shut, the air streaming at her eyes burning but she did not cry. The thin air of heat pierced her nose, sliced the curve of her throat and stabbed her straining lungs. Pull pull away there is pink silk on the path there is jumble in the stomach there is Jack Daniels in the freezer and ice cubes on the stove. She wants to be a wave, crashing, wants to be a motion, endless, wants to be fluid and ecstasy but beneath her is only the cracked eggshells of her stiff reality of her porous heart of her humming shame of her jagged breath of her screen door ripped by neighbour cats that sit outside, lifting paws to the dark within, hooking claws in the metal mesh. Pick pick, they make holes that she can hear. Breathing, she rocks.