Katie Berta
Set off like a ball rolling down a hill, there is not a way to stop it if you yourself are the ball. For a moment it feels good to have every atom of you compelled toward something, and then it feels like being a ball rolling down a hill. People put their bodies in the way and you roll right over them. Husband saying, angrily, what are you doing? and, at first, you just laugh and laugh. What am I doing? What are you doing? You feel his body as you roll over it. He is being spent by always putting his body in the way. Dissipated husband, round and ball-like you. Set off by a series of events—your whole life—like rolling a ball down a hill, you feel, if not consciously just under your consciousness, that you can't really be held responsible for anyone getting rolled over, insensate ball that you are. Insensate ball with dull, inert eyes showing through to dull, inert brain. A set of events brought you here, but none of this was, per se, fate, you believe, even if it was all inevitable. Irresistible, the pull-toward. Stuporous body, moving far below your will, the two—body, mind—held so far apart they appear, to each other, as single black specks that are eventually absorbed into their horizon.