The Dooloom

I arrived at the entrance of the Dooloom.
Indifferent doors.
Reverent stone.
Medium roast soil.
My paper was naively blank and my heart drummed a new language on my chest.

I was ready to talk to them.

A laser blade.
A skin splitting light!
Your pupils hyperventilate within a plastic bag, constricting with muscles they do not have.
Nobody anticipates the opal flame.

Blink.
Blink.
Blink.
Barks and shovel scrapes pack your ears full.
Blink.

I saw them. The workers of The Dooloom.
Rounded spines.
Fire hide skin.
Spring water eyes.
And They saw me.
They can’t help but see.
The fire they feed has burnt away the ghost membrane that plagues the vision of you or me.
And I am immediately lost.
Dust in the eye of the storm, stuck at the center of a chaotic routine that has no need for me.
Amidst the vertigo shadows, the shouts and the echos.
I am being pushed back out into a room I can no longer remember.

To feel rejected yet belong... The contradiction is killing me.
A circus of fire beckons me closer, but the cheek roasting heat makes all fresh faces turn.
I’m diving to the bottom of an ocean. My head is below my feat and it’s the right way to be. Pressure holds you together as the water describes a song of warmth long gone on your skin until you finally remember how hot you are.
This room... is sewn into my spine with threads of deepest purple, compassionate black, and cold.
How have I never noticed the string?

A weight finds our shoulder in the Dooloom.
Familiar warmth.
Good intentions.
Presence.
The contact settles me into my shoes.
I turn
A shock of blue looks back and is made bluer by the mud and work that has grown itself into her face and for a moment I am alone in peaceful appreciation of how you don’t need to be blue to help something be it’s best blue self.
She looks at you. Her gaze dives right into your belly, but she doesn’t take anything, she just smiles and grips your shoulder with her medicine hands.

Her throat speaks to your solar plexus.
“Easy.
You’re seen here.”

“Do you believe me?”

I nod.

“Are we seen here? Am I seen here?”

Once again I nod.

She is happy for me and removes her hand from my shoulder and I am still.

We are minors.
Harvesting the chunks of reality between the threads of tangibility.
With this we feed the flame.
We don’t know why we like the heat or why we’re drawn to the glow.
But we know we love the way it licks our eyes and stings our skin.
We don’t want it to go out.
This is why we’re here, why you’re here.

And even though fire burns…

Everyone sings praises to the warmth… of the Dooloom.