open a book and the words shoot off the page, each letter a photon bouncing off an orchestrated universe, illuminating a world that wasn’t there seconds before. i am in a chair, and then – riding a tram through 1930s Berlin, black-and-white photos turned into black-and-white words turned into black-and-white as ends to a color spectrum filling in sights and sounds and scents. and then – sitting at a dinner table in 1890s Ireland, witnessing an alcohol-infused christmas dinner go up in flames, petty remarks and self-righteous politics the tinder and faces like embers, pulsing with heat, breath stoking the fire and then – soaring in a flying car, london below, the thames a serpentine ‘s’ winding through the city, bridges segmenting it into a divided snake that calls on ben franklin; buildings sprawling every which way, swarming with lives. and then – i am in a chair. the clock’s hands are on its hips at four and seven, scolding me. my legs are staticky and unresponsive, on strike at having circulation severed. the book is shut but the words live within me.
a picture is worth a thousand words, but a reader lives a thousand lives.