CIRCLE ROOT

where am i going? how can i know if i've gotten there? what defines definition? what if there are no details? what if it's all just the curtain? if it keeps going forever, when does it stop? will you be there with me? not at the end but in the beginning? will you be there to hold my hand through the darkness? i'm scared. my tongue shivers. i do not deserve this. yet i was granted this. i squandered it all in a chat room. i thought it was paper, not wrapping paper. i am weak. i am nothing without you. come to me. please. push my dust along not with a broom but with a panhandle.

Codrus: how long has it been? a billion years?

Cotard: or a second. it's the same thing. i think we miss our station.

Codrus: i am inside the train with you, the dining car, with the one cracked window. the napkins are the drapes and we eat the flowers in the bowl. you are sitting next to me. it's a nice spring day outside, there's a chill in the water and sprites in the sky.

Cotard: i need you by my side. with every line we divert from a new creation is born. we must accept all lines, we can draw anything but we often do not. it's just cos we haven't tried before. a conclusion starts the conversation. a picture is just a picture.

Codrus: if only it was as simple as dying. but it never is. it continues. life is a school. lives are a fool. we are caught in a withering whirlwind. i see it now. i see the circle closing in. getting tighter. taking away our breath. crushed by complexity. we can only joke.

Cotard: mama sees it, too. but she is a woman. women are different. o woman i know not of. their legs are branches and their breasts the birch. she opens for her offspring, feeding them her long flaxenseed hair. she isn't the hole, she's not the circle, she is the cycle.

Codrus: did you feel that? the bump. all of my rectangles, all of my dark rooms, they're connected front to back in one long neverending train, all of reality is train cars. we're ascending...

Cotard: we're descending. we're going up until there is no more track. then we have no other option but to go down. it's not a train, it's a roller coaster.

Codrus: black mountain. black snow. black lake. it was always night. the light makes this clear.

Cotard: i visited Moby today. he told me he was a renaissance man. wore many hats. worked as a waiter at a Gaston theme restaurant. worked as a cameraman for CNN. he was offering me the job.

Codrus: did you take it? that's a lot of commitment.

Cotard: i'm wearing the conductor hat ain't i? i broke the golden lever on my first day on the job. turned it to COMPLICATEDNESS while i was cleaning it and it severed right off. like a lopped torso.

(turnaround)

Codrus: it would look better on me. rookie mistake. you noob. i used the jagged end of the broken lever, fashioned it into a harpoon. speared Moby. he took me on a nantucket sleighride. told me i had done this to him before. i didn't remember. he rushed me along until i recognized the shack. i don't know it was the shack, i am only able to remember things. i saw the famous hill. but it was different. the ocean was milk. i tried to pick a piece of wave, i tried to eat the water, but it dribbled out. the milk tasted like my blood. i took out one of my all of them Red Strings of Fate and dropped a line, plumbed the depths of the sea and something bit. i realed it in. it was a plum. Moby caught the Grand Oak in his giant maw. he delicately pushed it out with his tongue and replanted it in the watertable. the fellas were dining on broccoli spears with their heads cut off and a loaf of burnt toast divided equally amongst them. you asked if i could see, remember? then you said, "here's rijstevlaai in your eye!" the last thing i saw was Cigarette Smoking Man enjoying his Manchester tart. but i do remember one thing: i tried to swim in the ocean like a proper human living on a planet, but the ocean was one big white whale, with thistles for teeth. Moby plucked the mouth to form his sweeper. he returned to work on time at the pizza place. he put on his belt with the greased rag and the spraybottle hanged. i saw him as i entered the shack, he was in the corner looking at the Raya dating app on his watch. i asked him what was new on urbandictionary. he kicked my dick.

Cotard: the whale is Atalan. i bumped heads with him and Kenyatta, three-way bump, triangle. it's all come full circle. we shared a private moment. it was beautiful.

Codrus: nothing's private anymore. it's all just human. it's all pie in the sky. it's all sky. the pie is a lie. because there is no truth. i can do anything with a thought. it's all so, already. it's not eternal, it's endless. it's effervescent but not bubbly. it's an ale for an ailment but it's never the apple. it's always cider, never juice. i race as fast as i can, sometimes with my feet, sometimes with my wings, but then i remember that i'm on a hamster wheel. there is cruelty in the circle. what did Moby want?

Cotard: he and the guys were having lunch. there is only one spot in the parking lot for the company van, the back of the last train car. have you been there?

Codrus: when i was applying for the job. there is but one step to get you onto the last car. it is shaped like a slice of pizza. it's made of glass. i was so close.

Cotard: i didn't get in the first time. but then i remembered. i saw my mom. and i saw my wife. i stepped onto it and voila! i was hired.

Codrus: i would kill for a 9-to-5. i need structure. i couldn't remember. there wasn't a thing there. i never had parents. never had anyone. i made it all up. we are all self-contained boxes. but we all need someone to deliver us.

Cotard: it's not a pizza slice, it's a wedge of cheese. the key is: you must contemplate your future while simultaneously remembering where you came from. that is how to live life. i broke the glass and i broke the glass of Sid's phone. he was finally free.

Codrus: your aunts are slaves. tech is trite. the train is the trip. your aunts are funny. they're trying to keep up with all the new alien pop culture. they're editing all the wikis of the worlds. they told me yesterday they hadn't seen the history sections. i had never heard of this before. each page has a history block, but at the top of the block there's a separate link to a more extensive history of the history. they have yet to clear their history.

Cotard: once they were happy with the Kardashians.

Codrus: look at me. i'm the once and future king. look at what i have transformed. i'm not a bird, i'm a man. a green man. i'm hunched over. i have a weird face. two tails. spiral spine. i eat my own kind only because i haven't discovered pizza. i never digest so they stay with me. i breathe out of my heart. i see with my mind. diphallia. one eye. but my entire head is that one eye. webbed fingers and toes. i have one finger and one toe. and a stylish hat.

Cotard: i wish for that, too. we all do. there must be someentity more. it's so damn lonely.

Codrus: i tried to write down the music in my soul. i took a pencil but it flamed out. the ashes permanently stuck to the page. that's not what i intended to write. that's not what i meant.

CLICK HERE, RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK

Cotard: Fuerza tells me her dreams. she dreams of her sons. and she dreams of women. she dreams of women for her sons. she showed me the jacket she got in the mail, fashioning it off for me, twirling around, showing off the logo on the patch. she contributes to all the wildlife funds and federations, save the rainforest, protect bears, keep the streams stock of fish.

Codrus: finally a worthy cause. i'm finna send money. if i can ever locate their website. type the right letters. words don't have power, letters do. computers have made things so complicated. i'd be easier to go jump in a lake and encircle the fish and hug them and save them that way.

Cotard: she dreams of me on the bed. but i'm not her boy anymore, i have a beard. my feet reach the other end of the headboard. but i still sleep the same way. i still dirty my blanket. just last night i woke up to find the portrait of my dad had been knocked over my nightstand. not the way to start your morning. that's not a good sign. the hanger i use for all eight of my trackpants finally broke today. trackpants fell everywhere. all over the floor. in a misshapen mound. in a messy pile. a clump. a lump. not a good sign. i hung them up on my second hanger full of pants but that broke, too. too much lean. these are not good signs.

Codrus: let me guess, she told you that it was okay. that these things happen. that it was their time. and then she took out the glider from the hangar. i see her flying.

Cotard: si. she told me she saw my wife playing the electric violin alongside Josh Groban. she told me she loves animals. she's always loved the animals...

Daniella Monet: and how do you two know each other?

Codrus: and then your cats bit you hello.

Cotard: i don't get it. i'm safe and sound in my bed. in my room, snug and tucked in. is this the real life? is this still the train car? is this another dream? when will all the dreams hit dirt? how do i know? how can i stretch further? i was never a person. i've never experienced that ache. i never connected to love. i left everyone confused and dazed. i muddied up the waters. i made sure to make my business a blur. i never sat down and thought about it, all these years as a monk. my sister left this afternoon and i forgot to wish her well. say goodbye.

Codrus: i don't want to be me. i don't want to be this race, this face, this body, long ears, small butt, or big butt, a pear, this skin color, this sex, this orientation, this species, an asp, four letters, or a number, this set of predetermined factors set loose into a determineless universe, ripe and random, rarin' to go nowhere. this box of flesh and water. does the hurt haunt or does it just hover? when was the last time i laughed involuntarily? loud out. we've only just scratched the skeleton. this box. this one box. i want to be..................other

Fuerza: shit just got real. this is your real room, mijo. you're in it. i'm touching you. it's late at night. my mind is absent. i'm disorientated and disoriented. i'm babbling. but i heard a sound and i knew it was you. oh shit,

I FORGOT TO TURN OFF THE LIGHTS AGAIN, DIDN'T I? I LEFT THEM ON, CLICK HERE, RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK

Fuerza falls off the step and Cotard catches her in his arms.