Barbara Perez

When is the smell of a blackberry tree a harbinger of  violent movement rather than simply the recollection of a childhood Sunday dress hem-dipped in mud, handprinted with juice and seeds? Hard to say. A mind, when playing tricks is at its most sincere — at home raking through the body’s history, repeating the strange and nostalgic. The taste of dirty copper, the imagined cockroach in the corner, the sluggish slow of  the clock — doctors call these strange little prophets warning signs of a seizure, synaptic misfires looming like a song discordant, until the body — an unplucked string — is finally strummed.

Because a little reprieve, a little hope (even for those whom I love) would exculpate the world of  its actions, I hold to logic steadfast. Belief, without knowledge, dislodges perception of all the empirical world — (even for you, mom and dad). Know that if, for you, on some filthy lie I could wish for the mind’s persistence after death, I would say no.