Gothic Punctum
What’s the point? He was on the point of leaving when the oboist, unwinding her yellow scarf, strode in. A pointed effort to pervert the Rorschach. Children pointing at stars through bare branches. Now I will stand in the moon gate remembering my appointments: seamstress, cemetery, fortuneteller, well. You were told to bring three portraits, one for each point of a triangle. And still there’s a point in every memory where the footpath dissolves. Where water meanders toward a point on the teal carpet, like a melody. Like the pointillist rose tattooed on her sternum. At which point anything could happen: his heart exploding through a dormer window. From a production standpoint. Points in a leaf-swirl, points in a black-pupil stare. Your point being? I was appointed commander of a fleet of ghost ships creaking unseen in a dream. The point is to slide your hand beneath the skin. Follow the red moss to its vanishing point. Whereupon she shouted point-blank at her reflection. Counterpoint to midforest insects, divination of sheets on a new mattress. Our eyes fixed on the faintest point beyond the cloudscape.