"Utopia"

The horizon is pink. There… wasn’t a horizon before.

With maybe, maybe, maybe ten minutes left I find myself in a place of utter perfection. Listen—there are no other voices, no traffic, no wild birds spinning irregular songs all over the goddamn evening trees. There are no trees, either, only the wood of the box.

I am Law, unto myself. Anything I wish to do, I do it, and there is no outcry. If I want to move my ankle four inches to the left, the electric pulse splashes down my nervous net and there, see, it has moved. Nobody has a war about it, nobody screams the injustice of it to the stone face of a city hall. If I want to blink, I blink with impunity. That I won’t be able to breathe soon is no injustice; it is a fact of the world.

I swear there was no horizon before, but it gets brighter with each passing second, and I think there are silhouettes against it, walking.

Would you like to expand your lungs and take in the stiff cloud of carbon dioxide yes—yes, I would, and I will. Certainly I will accept the erection; it presses painfully against the lid, but all remains peaceful. No woman comments upon it, no man sneers lewd. They cannot cuff me any longer, not in this country.

I am isolated by a vast ocean of soil, on all sides, and my stratosphere is lined with grass I imagine. Pink grass, maybe, caught in the pink of sunset. The smell of blood is mine, a free thing, unrestricted by amendments or court orders. Yes the broken fingernails hang loosely; they are as free as children crossing a deserted street, utterly unaware of the roaring milk trucks just… over… the horizon…

Not even Farneman can wreck his dictatorship upon me now. This is my valley of lilies, and in my valley of lilies there is one single law: peace. Whatever you choose to do, God is with you in that choice, and the only government that runs runs silently from behind a silken curtain. If I want to flail my limbs wildly against the confines of the box, snap a toe, or
beat!
my!
forehead!
bloody! then I am free to commit such silly exertions without the faintest fear of persecution. There are no Jesus Christ’s here, and all the wood (world) wood is on the outside, so nobody could make a cross anyhow.

It seems really silly, now, that I let Farneman’s decision bother me at all. That was back in a place full of rules and consequences, and oxygen; the rule was easy, SHE IS HIS, NO YOU MAY NOT LOVE HER, and the consequences burn in my gut right now. Maybe, maybe five minutes tops.

But wonder of wonders, signs and portents! Look at me now. Fucking-A, my friend. Here comes the pink horizon, and those are not screaming horses or a clash of ballistae or clarion trumpets brassily in the light but only, only, only my people. Serenity. If I want to look at the glowing face of my watch, and ignore the hot spears in my chest, I may do so without passing a motion or lobbying for the majority vote. We don’t need that kind of thing here on the horizon.

I will sew a flag, lastly. The colors will be of blood, and shit, and radium. I’ll raise it to the stillness, the eye-popping stillness, the throat-squelching silence. The pink nether-sun light shall stream through it, make it glow with calm, something to watch through the night, through the bombs bursting in flight, the… rocket-red hair… the… something… still there… proof…

Oh Silvia. I love you. Please dig me up.