Saturday's Storyteller: "Trying to think."
by Belinda Roddie Trying to think. Trying to breathe. Trying to do either right now. It's tough. Exhausting. A mental experiment that goes awry the moment I try to turn my scattered thoughts into actual speech. Into language. I can't talk. If I can't think, I can't talk. If I can't breathe, I definitely can't talk. There's not much oxygen left in this room. The chandelier above my head is caught in a tornado of flames. It's burning off the rest of the air around me. I'm standing in the middle of a fancy restaurant with a towel around my arm and red trickling in a Rorschach test across my forehead. I can still feel where the champagne bottle hit me. It didn't shatter, but it cracked just enough. Enough for a sharper edge to slice into my pale skin. Crimson on white. Your body was black on gold. Lit up by the lamp on the stage as the piano player clutched his chest and gulped down whiskey so he didn't collapse. I can't remember what