State your state of mind

Someone's behind me holding a gun to my head.

Print Gallery Lithograph by M.C Eschers (1956)

State your state of mind

by Bob Hicok

A memory. I'm in a tall building.
My forehead's pressed to a window.
I'm looking at a boat on fire in a harbor. 
Someone's behind me holding a gun to my head. 
An alarm's going off
and a woman's climbing the building 
across the street. She's naked. 
There's a tattoo on her back 
of a woman climbing a building, 
and so on, and so on, 
all the way down to a speck of dust. 
You have very good eyesight, 
I hear myself think, even though hearing 
isn't actually involved, is it, 
but we don't read or see our thoughts 
either, so much as touch them 
like braille. Brain braille. 
Let's not think that again, I think now, 
in what will become a new memory 
very soon. I'm late for something 
but can't figure out what. A funeral. Wedding. 
Belief in god. Fear that my life's
an irrelevant part in a sitcom 
that was canceled after three episodes.
The person holding the gun 
asks me to pick a number between one 
and infinity. Infinity, I say.
I am right. I begin to cry
but never quite finish.

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