Cities of the Plain

The cushions he lay on were damp from the rain and they stank. He was very thirsty. He tried not to think. He heard a car pass in the street. He heard a dog bark. He lay with the yellow silk of his enemy’s shirt wrapped about him like a ceremonial sash gone dark with blood and he held his bloodied claw of a hand over the severed wall of his stomach. Holding himself close that he not escape from himself for he felt it over and over, that lightness that he took for his soul and which stood so tentatively at the door of his corporeal self. Like some light-footed animal that stood testing the air at the open door of a cage. He heard the distant toll of bells from the cathedral in the city and he heard his own breath soft and uncertain in the cold and the dark of the child’s playhouse in that alien land where he lay in his blood. Help me, he said. If you think I’m worth it. Amen.