Things Behind the Wall ​

by

Adam McOmber​

A skeleton or something like a skeleton. Wood framing. Wattle and daub. A secret passage. A milk-white room. A place you’ve never been before. Pipes for water. A lost manuscript. The early memoirs of Lord Byron or Shakespeare’s Cardenio. Green mold. Silver mold. The beginnings of a memory. Wasps. The jewelry of the countess. Two mirrors. Old letters. Tools that were used to make the wall. Brick hammer. Pointing trowel. Neuroses. Images that surpass all experience. Long-eared bats. Dust-colored moths. According to the rule of simple encounters, humans alternate between states of hope and fear. A painting in a gilded frame. What is the subject? The underworld. Black cliffs. Black sky. Something like the moon. What floats there in the water? I can only see its eyes. Screen memories. Hysteria. Obsession. To sigh. To weep secretly. A daguerreotype. A strange garden. A space inside the mind. There are shadows shaped like things from childhood. Primitive narcissism. A jar of old coins. A locket with a knot of hair inside. Your double. My double. The extinction of the self. A second wall beneath the first—it’s something like a layer of flesh. Intellectual uncertainty.  A jar of buttons. The notion of the “dark precursor.” Wood shavings. A rusted sword. Here is something true: the main property of any given object is to eventually be lost.