inspired in part by Jay Varner

Chris's father continued playing the lead role

in his dreams in the months just after his death, still

kept alive by machines in abandoned cold war hospitals.

His skin was a windowless sail on a glass sea, his lungs gray

bells hung lifeless on his spinal column, parasites multiplying

in his unwashed beard. Alive yes, his fragile life projected

at the baffling drive-in of Chris's brain. But as the years

passed and the size of his roles diminished, his appearance

regained its lost robustness and he began taking on

smaller parts that challenged him to immerse himself

into each scene. He rose to the occasion, at first speaking as

gas station attendants, school bus drivers, and sympathetic

fathers giving their daughters over to Chris at lavish weddings,

his voice and mannerisms passing away as his body had once, consumed

by radiation and chemicals. He continues fading into

the backdrop. Now, he is one of the chorus of thousands, always

becoming smaller, smaller still. Look, now he fits on the head

of a pin. See the tiny hole he makes in Chris's heart, see the slow

trickle of blood down Chris's chest. See that look on Chris's face.

It's the look of a soul being refilled with iridescent light.