the rest have fled or are dead

though the lawn was mowed one month past, the cold kept it freezer-fresh. i knew that it wasn't true about walt disney being cryogenically frozen, but it was my first thought, what with the dead grass still green. then i thought heads in jars, then the fetuses in jars they had found in the catacombs of my college's science building while doing construction. then the word catacomb and how i had no reference for its origin, save perhaps some connection to honeycomb. ADHD isn't a plague; it's the human thought process. some synapses are just faster than others.

something about autumn that makes hearing acute and important. the air isn't a hum, laughter isn't filling it. there isn't any air except for wind, and it's cold and dry. it takes away my sense of smell. instead i think i smell the actual electricity of all that stuff of summer dying off. i taste the void, the vacuum, the cold departure. i should be preparing...frost is here. somewhere i still have the facilities to do this alone. winterize, hoard, hibernate. i look at my hands and see i haven't been honing any burrowing skills. perhaps a lean-to would do. i could allow myself canned sardines instead of ice fishing for lake trout.

there is no one to meet. tundra will choke on too many characters. two is one too many. and what horrible opera would ensue. vulgar the dialogue, distracting the glance. no exit. no one can concentrate under those conditions. all efforts on all fronts, having your wits without wit. unsweetened teas, native spices, boiling water. ludicrous to see a doeppleform halt and stare back over the crest of the seaside hill. seaside - right. that's salt i feel buffing my exposed cheeks, cleaning my working lungs. curing me like meat. and to think if it were boy. if i were a boy alone. it could never be, out here, gloryless. but me, i am built for this. low center of gravity, low heart rate, and larded. i'm not sensible at all. senseless instinct serves better than analytical proration. opportunity. darwin feast on the flesh of dickensian foppery. no hand from the sky carves a moral fiber. frostbite teaches greater lessons. hunger casts stones. the sun heals and glares and warms and burns. tell me it's not a cold star. tell me nothing. i've grown autistic, saying nothing to everything, but still i sing myself to tears and laughter. communication has faded like an inefficient gasoline motor. given up like neck ties or rouge. remembered like record players and holidays. words, that strange game i used to play with everyone. stringing them together comfortably, thinking they were mine. barking at one another we were! now just one, even numbers seem silly. nothing is counted when you sleep when you can sleep, eat when you can eat. some days are night more than not, or many without rest. these things i see and realize cannot be delirium, for when you start classifying what is merely mirage, you lose it all to thought. i'm alone. what i see is there. what i see is all there is, at any given time. my blurred vision is not impaired. gave up on edges and lines, the bleed is much more telling. halos of spatial relations. i am never safe or threatened.

the monochromatic is setting in. the fire from the trees spread to the ground and snuffed itself out. i crawled to a stop and lay flat, cheek to ground and watching. the flakey embers are louder now than in their prime. it is the noise of resistance - "this is not death."