blood-colored bones of peaches
Artifact #006, collected by S. Feng. Dated circa A.S. 78, found in Alexandria, Egypt, in a reconstructed modern form of the Library of Alexandria II. Named for the library of the ancients, the Library of Alexandria II is the only remaining library of traditional visual texts in Planeta Nox after the world’s transition to Braille. Below follows a diary entry written with ink from its keeper, who was blind before the Reversal.
yellowtile
marble
chandelierscreaming
leatherscale inkdripping
chair
candlesunseen
i am an organizer of things.
in my dream, i wander through many cubicles that stand before me. the receptionist at the front desk of this unnamed building pierces me with a set of eyes that remind me of the minotaur: beast-like. i do not like how specific words are. i do not like how we read as if we are trying to rush to the very end of this whirlwind. i like to sit with each word on my tongue, like it is a peeled grape. this is my dream of an office which has been described to me but i cannot see.
i am a blind man in a world of darkness, but the difference is, the second was not always true. i have always been a dreamer in my own world of darkness. now we dream
togethertogethertogethertogether a train passing into the light
a horizon we shareshareshare
neveralone
a single point
my lover’s cheek sliding beneath
my hand the angles
of togetherness now as
pink as space
in the darkness i feel a train that broaches the horizon of my fieldless vision.
in the darkness i feel the water beckoning to me:
when i was four, i dipped my hand in a bucket of half-melted
ice, the yard outside still warm, the grass
peregrine and beautiful. apples and cherries
bit my hand. the light was soft
and optimistic, i think.
john milton was blind when he wrote paradise lost.
‘the water is blue,’ people tell me. they describe it
to me like crystals. crystals are hard, flinty, a destroyer
of skin.
red motherhair brushing like the legs of spiders along my face: the heat of a lamp spreading along my back: the needles of acupuncture against my joints:
blood-colored bones of peaches rattling to the ground
yellow tender little lily petals beneath my hands:
orange dimpled pockets of fruits
squares of soft cheeses: spreading like butter
white ice glasses of milk i mix for my visitors
who come: the cubes clinking in the darkness
[ ]
a body
untouched : a green root
a piano key
sound
[ ]
i see more colors than the
average human in this world
plunged into darkness before the rest
the leather, the scales, the roosted baubles of books
as familiar to me as light
peeking through the crevices of my
imagination
it must pour and sweep and deluge and
oh the music of their laughter
i am the keeper of the last great library on earth: the library of alexandria
marble like a great cage over me and my body
reaching down the street: staccato footsteps like lamplights
each month i open the doors to the moonlight
of little children taking tours
i smell their sweet jasmine hair and their skinny wrists
oh the swelling laughter
they ask me what color looks like and i tell them
color exists when you search for it least
the spikes of dandelions red with the heat of youth
the drip of a tear white with endlessness
color is eternity
[ ]
the discrete
math of a sound
snuffed
hold it in your palm
paint it
[ ]
together we light the final candles
i can feel the wax underneath my palms
and the gasps of their voices
that is what fire looks like to me: the sound of their surprised
voices echoing up and down the white hallways
like a wisp of hair
fire is oh! and the little round ring of light flickering
as i pull out the tattered volumes
the last printed words
i cannot feel them but the sound glides to me
the flat blindness of the pages blank
beneath my fingertips
but the sound of their voices
oh! the fire all around me
the light