inside the city of a cage:

I need to write about a place. The instructions are my own to call forth. First, I must find this place upon opening the doors within my mind, possibly held captive in the compartments of a conditional state—the trappings of my memory are the only boundaries I may fall between. The shell of my soul is hard to penetrate, so I must be invited inside before I risk breaking through. I will retrieve an all access pass when the mood purrs as word sounds to my liking. I find myself, lying casually: my arms act as bookmarks, keeping the body of my soul in an ordered place. This area of honor is where one can read my substance and find markings of my praises. Words designed, placed in a pattern and woven to the materiality of the textured page. Upon reading, sights arouse and prints of imagism pop forth, presenting the reader with a clearer spectacle of my insight.

How can I commit to the telling of a single place? Reshape the contours of the space, which is etched in my memory, and appear in my line of vision if and only for the impulse of an artistic attempt. And by some impossible mathematical method and laborious interior design attempt, fit it between the frame of a page to be critiqued by the elite and viewed in passing by the intellectually young. I hurry to admit that my memory has not solidified. I still see scenes the way a child plays on his etch-a-sketch—the way an adolescent whimsically carves her and her lover’s initials into the sand and upon turning her back at the beach, has them stolen away by the sea’s waves. I mean to say: nothing and no one may ever truly exist for long in the cities of my interior.

A place? Think! A place. But I know so many. One written assignment already in and the motor of my mouth already run across the landscape of the classroom, and my teacher tells me I am powerful with poetics, rich in the quality of words and have used ink to create images not just show alphabetical letters. But (and there is always a but) I can tell that with this assignment, she would like to see me use different hands that won’t steal her breath. I can guarantee her that I know how, but can’t guarantee that I will act upon it. Instead, at the moment, I will site a quote that proves I do think in academia and never neglect my research, no matter how many rules I defy; “Sometimes one option such as mine may seem out of time and out of pace with the present, but it may be because I see further,” Anais Nin.

Out of pace, out of place, a sight not seen in the space but seemed. These are all qualities I want to bring into judgment before you and have you question. Most read the value of place one way—for example, Location: Sanibel, Time: Summer. But of what use is the obvious if is already known by one and assumed by many? I question this term, “place.” A place in mind? in time? a condition? real or surreal? been to or dreamed of? All do exist! All are locations one is capable of getting lost in, if that is what must prevail to term place as true.

I must begin. I must begin mapping out the location of where this place can be found. I take out my map from the filings of my memory. Blow off dust, push away the clouds and stomp out the smoke that still burns on the places I needed to no longer exist. Sights speed past me down the highway of remembrance. I stop and peer in to view a few distant towns: old faces, a skeletal figure that hides itself away, stale sheets, closet corners and a confetti of words that still lay with their face to the ground and have been deliberately walked over (once, twice, always). I look out the window and watch the wind blow the stars away. Holding my breath, I wish for nothing. Turning to look back in, I wonder whether there was an experience there and that is why I stand before it, examining signs that signal me in—what crime took place? The material of this memory may not show up till later. But who can wait?

I get inside the vehicle; my vision impressed by footprints and by default go swerving down the streets of my veins. Accidentally I crash, split by two visions and separated into selves. Senses speak off of the tunnel where I remain. Where was I? Where. Did I or anyone really exist inside the space of the place that is wishing itself into my recollection? Or has my imagination intoxicated me so drastically that my perspective is goggled by a point of view displaced by my other self? Resulting in impaired storytelling abilities, where I as the creator and narrator have hung my characters inside of a cage. Instilling us in time, trapping us in a container of space and persuading us to move within the borders of a place injected with air, where we hang so convincingly between the layers of time and many levels of a self-imposed world that we claim it to be real, the story to be true. Look out, Reader, and between the places in time try and locate your self.