CYLINDERS

You understand color. You take it into your hands. You put it around your room. You look for a rhythm. You shape them together like cylinders. You place your hands on it. You feel it and understand the heat. You hold your hand above flame. You are blind and every color is a different flame with a different heat. You understand color because you understand heat.

Your face, it looks stupid when you eat. You don't know that people are disgusted when they see you eating, when they see you working to keep yourself alive. You offend rooms full of people when you walk into them. You know this because you can feel all the heat coming off of their bodies like flames licking all over you. You can feel all the swelling beneath the broadcloth or the flannel or the lace and the silk but it all feels just like fire pushing out some new heat.

You think of the world in cylinders because you are blind and no one has been able to explain to you exactly what cylinder is. They talk to you about sidewalks and revolving doors but no one knows how to describe to you the shape that does little else but be its own curious unit of matter. They use words like 'round' and 'cylindrical'.

And even yet, you understand cylinder like you understand color like you understand the cones and rods your body does not have a home for. You are cylinder when you do not stop at the recognition of color but at the understanding of it. You understand your form as any possible configuration in the universe and that a cylinder is simple one of those configurations but what the fuck is it then? What else is it except the thing no one can explain? What else is it but the exact fucking key to all of it? The thing that will bore into your head a cavity to be filled with cones and rods. A home from which to restore your sight but not your understanding of cylinder. Something that will show you color but not explain heat.