#23

The Phlox’s Dream

written by Mathias Svalina

This is a dream of color. Pure red. Not red things, red surfaces, but red as a being. Then yellow. A yellow that permeates all things. And then amaranth. Then fuchsia. Each color is followed by the color that it is most not, the color so unlike it that it is hard to believe that each of these disparate states of existence could both even be referred to by that one, flimsy word: colors. As one color leads to its opposite, then that color its opposite, which is not the previous color, each opposition of color being a relational state, not a categorical state, what I am becomes less & less me, becomes more & more like what a color is, a way light makes of existence something knowing. And then, slowly, imperceptibly at first, & then is a rush, I emerge from the pure being-space of color into a multiplicity of nascent petals rising from the stems of flowers, spreading out into wide, full petals, wilting, falling, blowing away in the breeze, blowing into the streets, into the alleys, collecting in wind-drift piles beside rusted out traincars, beside crumbling office buildings, piling higher than the buildings, burying the buildings.