Oasis (Chain Poetry)

I awoke in the oasis. Three days prior I had been sitting with her. Now she was nowhere.Three days prior I had been drinking fresh water in the city - now I couldn't find a drop.

Only in times of distress can one fully grasp the value of such things.

Since I had been rendered unconscious, I wasn't conscious of the passage of time. I didn't know how long it would be before the hallucinations set in, but I knew they would, knew that the visions of home would take me, the specral visitors from some ungodly realm. Sure enough, as time passed I saw a bird fly overhead - a pelican of all things.

That was when I knew that the insides of my brain had melted into garbage, burned and twisted. No amount of refusal on my part could change that. No matter my resistance, no matter my will. Truly, there could only be compliance.

I let it take me, let the dreams take me on a journey to the beginnings of time itself. To Constantinople, Rome, the burning plains of Africa. I went from black to white, inside to outside, and I saw her at multiple points along the way. But I knew it was mere illusion, could not blind myself to that horrifying reality.

No, my flight could end only in my death, subject to the inevitability of fate. And as I considered this, I wondered aloud, to the trees, to the dust, to the sky.

"What will you do when your time comes?"

• Oasis
• Value
• Pelican
• Garbage
• Refusal
• Compliance
• Journey
• Time
• Flight
• Inevitability