Tester

ing you over. Series of gangly plant
arms reach out in concert, the
green sounds a constant soft drone
and the flowers stand as beautiful
colored sentries, singing melodies
and watching all the while. They
hang from the ceiling in ornate
mobiles, spinning and growing out
of their glass containers. There is so
much moisture in the air that they
are just growing and growing until
there is a scream and they stop.
They shrink and wait. With a deep
breath of fresh air you take in the
hanging plants and growing moss
and the body relaxes a beat, comforted
in their presence, displaced
so far from their laboratory homes,
and yet so beautiful against the
brick cave walls.
I dream a plant kingdom. All is
lost and my body is hot.
I think I mentioned my affectionate
relationship with the walls
of my apartment. They yield the
sensitivity of skin fused with the
dependency of bone. I fall into
prayer, reverent. Without these
walls I don’t know where I’d be
right now. Sick—out in the storm.
These walls bleed a history of injustice,
built by people who perhaps
never enjoyed their comforts.
Each brick stacked on another
creates the private enclaves that
perpetuate the private enclaves of
my body—as some individual task
force machine—urging me to fear
my neighbor until things are tamed
and difference is erased. Each day
the culture of terror resumes. The
private outpost houses the wary
sentinels, diagnosing the violence
and wretched existence carried
out beyond their walls. Under the
weight of such a damning vision,
the prophesy is fulfilled: people
making themselves through the
worst image of their enemy. The
fear breeds the feared. I spend so
much time in my private room. I
crave the mess hall. As I lie tracing
the history of this building
and its people, I imagine the story
of the storm. It is nascent now,
but it will come again and again,
with increasingly erratic ferocity. I
wonder whether or not this history
of the building can stand up to
the fantastical storms of the future.
But for now, I stay in bed, lights
flickering on my bedside table with
each ebb of power. The wind and
rain blow against the window and
the sounds leave a tremble…
I am made up of things. I
don’t mean the tired stardust adage
or the even older Epicurean
model—although I do think my
body is swerving all of the time.
My body is part of this room…
and the sickness that surely arises
from some malignancy within me
forms new ties to its environment,
to this room. Bodies work, day by
day, in the drudge of physical labor
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