Doxological bells form sonic latticework your soul is meant to climb. Ropes of incense rise around the mercy seat, no one smells the right day, no one allowed inside the tent. Toxic mistletoe dangles like a surveillance camera hung by a corrupt king. A child’s balloon has a much longer string, so there’s more time to catch it should it slip away. A vertical dream of Herod redirects a horizontal flowchart of Magi, one of a series of dams raised inside synoptic valleys. Strategically dropped dream-bombs sprout walls to shape the future Ascension. How do you avoid influencing the sequence of life events penetrated at hidden points by the dream? How do you clean the dust off the dream button without pushing it? The time traveler has to fall asleep staring at the picture of his target day the day of. He goes to give a gift to Neanderthals, a pre- historic spoiler about gold. He goes back to buy the time travel book but someone had beat him to climb the bookstore ladder and had bought it already. Himself. The book of myrrh perfume can’t be taken from the bottom of the stack. It needs patience, till it comes of its own accord to the top of the pile.

Jesse Hilson is a writer living in the Catskills in New York State. His writing has appeared in AZURE, Maudlin House, Pink Plastic House, ExPat Press, Windows Facing Windows Review, and elsewhere. His crime novel Blood Trip will be published by Close to the Bone in 2022. His poetry chapbook Handcuffing the Venus De Milo will be published by Sparrow’s Trombone in 2022. He can be reached on Twittter at @platelet60

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay