syndrome()

by Dawn Canada

ACT 1:

The left hand of the Universe swats the dirty fly resting on my cheek.

In one swift moment I am acquainted with the real, shining face of tragedy;

In one swift moment, molten white stars move to orbit my head like a crown of thorns. I stare up (/down?) from this ceilingless room and fall into a freshwater lake of vertigo – The Earth is spinning.

It has been spinning since the day it was born, wrapped up in a celestial, carbon-fiber swaddle, crying with its eyes closed and mouth open, tongue one-third of the way out…

The Sun is hugging the Earth somewhat tightly (skin to skin), singing him a lullaby with silent notes.

Galaxies watch as I watch,

Galaxies watch as I float and blink and float unblinking.

ACT 2:

The Moon, sulfuric and brutalist, orbits the teen Earth as the Sun watches.

The teen Earth orbits the Sun as the Sun watches. We spin and spin and spin.

ACT 3:

Does the Sun [triune states of matter (all at once!)] get motion sick?

How many circles are there in existence?

(

Steering wheel, vinyl record, silver & gold hoop earring,

Soccer ball, clock, terrified pufferfish

)

ACT 4:

I count in my mind the amount of repetitions.

I count in my mind the amount of spins occurred, now past participle, non-prophetic perfect tense (!=). A sphere’s sides, either infinite or zero– I turn over in my mind the preferable answer.

ACT 5:

The shape of a quark became known to me–

The knowledge I’ve tucked where the roots of my hair meet the bare skin of my nape (completely out of sight)

Each morning (/night?/noon?) the Sun tells me a story I cannot hear nor retell Each morning…

Each morning I find that the real, shining face of tragedy has burned itself into my retinas like dead pixels, like double exposures shot at an important ceremony for corrupt politicians.

The tragedy that I have come to know is so Newtonian and so palindromic.

And so exact it becomes worth nothing.

Voiceless in the vacuum of space I can only spin and spin and spin and count in my mind the number of repetitions–

Like a director with no crew, like a saint with no human witnesses.

Dawn Canada is an 18-year-old First-year student in a Literary and Cultural Studies course in the Philippines. 

At 2 years old she had mastered the alphabet enough to sing it backwards, and at 3 she learned a skill that allowed some historical figures to save nations – she learned how to hold a pen. Those skills were the Big Bang of Dawn's intense, manic fixation with writing and literature. She is simultaneously fearful and excited that one day she will arrange a sequence of words exact and specific enough to cause a cataclysmic, world-ending, entropic collapse. On that day the sky blanketing her hometown, Cebu, will be red or green or purple or some other color only shrimps can name. But skies are blue as of now. So Dawn will carry on with writing.