After the graphic novel adaptation of Paul Auster’s City of Glass
by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli
Peter Stillman shuts his eyes
and speaks to me.
He says that Peter Stillman
is not his real name.
He makes phone calls
in the middle of the night to detectives
and asks them to help him
search for his words
because they get lost
in the feathering
blue threads of dollar bills—
camouflaged in engrossing noise.
They are clouded by the current
of his father’s fists.
Peter Stillman lives in a world
of black and white.
He stares and sleeps and starves himself
for a glimpse of the sun—
the raging light of gold and orange,
brilliant enough
to burn his pale face into color.
Peter Stillman tells me
about his metamorphosis.
He is a dragonfly,
Gregor Samsa,
the organs of leaves.
In the morning, he is born.
He wakes up and grows old
as shadows move from one side of the room to the other
and every night, he dies.
Peter Stillman lets me speak.
I tell him about the hours
that I spend sweating in the dark
and the miles and miles
that I walk the city streets—
the pavements that I wear thin.
I am threadbare.
I divide myself
so that I soon will become nothing,
so that I will forget the faces of my wife and children,
so that their faces will fade into the chasm
of my bare apartment walls.
Peter Stillman shakes his head
and says that I am wrong.
I am lost with his language.
He says that there is hope
even in this bloodless prison.
One day, he says,
when he doesn’t wake up from death,
he may become God.
He will right his wrongs
and mine.
He will ease his pains
and mine
and he will position the sun
to set fire to all our faces.
xo, Rose
