A Paragraph from Apophenia

“The inevitable wake of worlds,” I say, reading the paper before me. “A wind comes and dashes against us, breaking bones and stripping skin from tissue, tearing children from mothers’ arms, and as they stare ahead, their flesh leaving them before their eyes, a whisper shimmers on the horizon, its promise a funeral change, a trading of one generation for another, a woman’s heart for a man’s chest, and we take it and eat it and wipe the dripping juices from our chins, our bellies full, pregnant with another dull repetition of human means.” The berry eater watches me—I see him peering through the window, his lips stained purple—but I do not acknowledge him, I simply place my hands on the desk and look down at the floor a few feet away. Gibbons starts babbling, his words falling over one another like drunk sorority sisters, each syllable too unstable to stand by itself. Chad Arroyo looks at me, his stare not unlike that of the berry eater’s. “Look!” I scream, pointing at the window, and everyone is silent and staring now, the berry eater mooneyed and dazed, his visage crumbling through the thin glass. Gibbons gets out of his chair and approaches, and only when he is a foot away does the voyeur slink off, vanishing but not disappearing from our collective memories, not unlike a bad, disturbing dream.