Stanzas: Monthly Chapbooks January 2015: Ourobouros | Page 19

III
‘I don’t understand what’s happening to me,’ she says, and we as one nod.
‘It’s difficult,’ we say, ‘but try not to be afraid.’
‘What is this? What’s happening?’ She squirms, as much as one can squirm when
one is part of the Greater Objectivity floating near the periphery of Sirius B.
‘Relax,’ we say. It’s easy for us to say, because we know what happens next. We
remember it. And she remembers it too: remembered, once, but not now.
Now she is losing that memory to make space for new ones. Our Greater Objectivity
is being replaced with a Lesser, but no less important, Subjectivity.
‘You must find yourself,’ we say.
‘But I’m right here!’ and then, ‘Wherever here is.’
‘Here is where you belong, but not right now. You will come back to us,’ we say as
we watch her consciousness unfurl from The Fold and drift towards Earth. ‘You’ll
remember again.’
‘I’m scared,’ she says, as her mind locates a body, moments from creation. ‘What if
it hurts?’
‘Of course it will hurt,’ we say, and then smile. ‘But it will only hurt the corporeal.
The True Form will survive. You’ll come back to us, just you wait.’
‘What’s that sound?’ She says.
We chuckle. ‘That’s just us, mumbling The First Word. We’ll keep mumbling until
the end, you know.’
‘I think... I think I’m going to be born now.’ Her voice is soft and far away.
‘We await your death,’ we say, and then, with the word already formed, waiting to
burst through our mouthpiece, we give her a name. ‘Eve.’
IV
The snake found himself wrapped around the bark of a tall and leafy tree. The tree
said, ‘I am the tree of life,’ but the snake could not reply for he had lost his tail down
the back of his throat, and his body was wrapped around the bark, and he was still.
By his side a red and pulpy fruit lay, withering, and he couldn’t help but suffer from
the strongest sense of Déjà Vu.

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