Sylvia’s eyes make disastrous confessions. They glaze red then green then black. On Sundays they swim in a red currant sea, their currency bankrupt, ruptured and enraptured. Sylvia looks grimly through the window at the wino winnowing winsomely inside-out, and laughs with all her fight. At that moment the door enters with an excuse-me, sipping silver. What’s this annoying crackling noise? It seems to come from you or perhaps from Sylvia’s deadly aunties, who lie folded up at the bottom of her wardrobe. Their mouths are full of sausages and they hum in the night. A knight waves from somewhere far off – not me, you bastards! Yellow moments drip from bleak taps. Drip drip, your nose is gone. Which is all very well, witch is all very – well… which is not to say, knot to say, so difficult to say, I get tied up. The hanged man weeps and his cheeks burn with my shame.

This was never going to be a good idea. Try to concentrate, Sylvia. Try to concentrate ON Sylvia. So. Sylvia’s eyes are wormholes into the devil’s dreams, spy holes into squirrels’ foragings, dirt holes filled with sugar, spite, lies and full stops. Why all this crap about her eyes? Does a woman not have any other bodily features worthy of comment or cement? Poor Sylvia, with her hopeless unhoped-for eyes, with her eyes like smashed lightbulbs, with her eyes like laughing testicles, sits at last and finds a piece of god or cod stuffed into the cushion gratefully receiving her terrifyingly angular rump. She falls to prayer. As her words ascend, the disgusting hatch at the top of her head is thrown open and her internal organs attempt their escape. Her brain does not want anything to do with it, however. How wise!

Soon, Sylvia is a husk. But her eyes, her eyes, you should see her eyes, still open, still limply inky and languid and smoky like coffee and sex with strangers and regrets at 3am. Her eyes point at nothing, at you, at me, the person responsible for all this.

—

This is a piece of automatic writing, originally tweeted in manic haste a couple of evenings ago.

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