By Kevin Armor Harris

Sketch for a study of Egyptian mummies

Huddle of supines, dimly lit, any motion ever now forever smothered. Surely there can be no escape. Embalmers with their hands on time have sealed all promise, bodies and their shadows compressed as one, as less, stacked like toppled totems. Eye-bored coffins, neatly nested, sarcophagi, in tombs in chambers in monuments, aligned to invisible stars—triumphs of claustrophobia, all oppression converging. The silence must have had such depth and darkness, the darkness so cool and silent.

Here’s one, found gutted, bound and gagged, for a routine afterdeath—ghost-abandoned, a queen of shreds and patches. Spirit that might have vented, long since atrophied. To this favour, this long end, she came long since.

Wakefulness is no more real nor less. This seems to be about impenetrability, about asking and re-asking how some things remain unknowable. What we cherish about the unknown, what we know about it, this needs telling. How tell then?

A child here, with her paddle doll, all her short life one bandaged wound, such lessness. What an intrusion—to know this—how vulgar our interference in their desperate determination for eventuality. Is she trapped in a dream perhaps, unable to get her coat on or to find her brother or to remember a word or a sum, unable to wake, unable. These are sculptures, as lifelike as you like.

Did they acknowledge sun as damage, or was it silence they craved? Theirs were arts of poise, accepting gravitation, edging towards stillness, accumulation of separate moments unblended—after all, they had forever. As if eternity would make any difference.

Study for self-portrait asleep

Seen from within, breathing appears much as from without. But perspective suspect. Note very slight movement of room around, presumably effect of breathing. Likewise unreliable. Note impenetrability of thought, mind in its denial active at rest. Occasional hint of eyelids under pressure from within, telling tales, scenes behind beyond glimpsing, from wings or fly.

Side on, bulk undefinable in non-committal light. Note intermittent twitching of lower limbs. Scarce detail. Tiny tremors as cells rebuild, that must be about yesterday and tomorrow, twin bolsters set to hold a body in place.

There seems to be submission to a dream, as if to get away from time. Pressure to resign to some vague narrative, willing suspension to memoryfoam mindsets and blacklustre images, capitulation to overlapping scapes, dream of a box with eyes, of words ungrasped, dream of a garment, a coat—anticipating its occupation, but being absent unable to assume it, unable, dreams of waking, of being able.

Again the impenetrable. Tell, tell. What is known about it. Note then, there is a barrier, something keeping us out or in, and an upright figure saying Move along, nothing to see here. Dream too defies its set escape, will always die rather than be discovered.

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Kevin Armor Harris lives in England and writes short fiction and prose poems. His work is beginning to appear in sources such as Thin Skin, Dream Catcher, Short Fiction, Streetcake, Modern Literature, Metaworker and Flash Fiction North.