J A Knight
LIFE CODE
There is no time; the linear is a smiling cat; the door broke down; the love happened.
When she held you for the first time she knew you completely, as completely as anyone can know anything. She had dreamed of you, after all. In a sense, she created you… or you were created through her, as the story goes. We are all magicians and builders of things, though most of us don’t know it.
The dream goes like this: blue room of water. God light from above. Child’s fist, foot, curve, face, the arc of an eye, the symmetry of circles… and then an opening of this body—which surprised her—a movement so clean and assured and then the push towards the light like a frog or a fish. The child rose and rose through the blue, light-filled waters and then she could see that you were her boy. Her boy and not her girl—the girl she thought she was growing. The dream was prophetic. You knocked on her consciousness with messages she’s still unlocking.
This is all so she won’t forget. Because forgetting comes so easily; she doesn’t need to try. All the good things we can’t hold and must free... but not this. Not this.
We are entering a world where “things” are no longer “objects.” This manuscript is a collection of dots and code I couldn’t break. To destroy it requires only the push of a button. No fire. No demolition. No rending of pages from a book. Nothing to eat or bury.
We fall for images that have no anchor in our actual world—the boundaries are thinning. There is no boundary. Well. We should have believed the sage by the stream a thousand years ago. There is no door and no window.
There is no time; the linear is a smiling cat; the door broke down; the love happened.
When she held you for the first time she knew you completely, as completely as anyone can know anything. She had dreamed of you, after all. In a sense, she created you… or you were created through her, as the story goes. We are all magicians and builders of things, though most of us don’t know it.
The dream goes like this: blue room of water. God light from above. Child’s fist, foot, curve, face, the arc of an eye, the symmetry of circles… and then an opening of this body—which surprised her—a movement so clean and assured and then the push towards the light like a frog or a fish. The child rose and rose through the blue, light-filled waters and then she could see that you were her boy. Her boy and not her girl—the girl she thought she was growing. The dream was prophetic. You knocked on her consciousness with messages she’s still unlocking.
This is all so she won’t forget. Because forgetting comes so easily; she doesn’t need to try. All the good things we can’t hold and must free... but not this. Not this.
We are entering a world where “things” are no longer “objects.” This manuscript is a collection of dots and code I couldn’t break. To destroy it requires only the push of a button. No fire. No demolition. No rending of pages from a book. Nothing to eat or bury.
We fall for images that have no anchor in our actual world—the boundaries are thinning. There is no boundary. Well. We should have believed the sage by the stream a thousand years ago. There is no door and no window.
~
Lyric Essay Award Finalist
