wildscape. literary journal

Dopamine Fast
by Joshua Lillie

I hear why so serious, but we don’t carry

              that flavor ice cream. 

     Some cultures don’t even have words  

          for our brand of cognitive dissonance. 

          A cigar is a cigar is a cigar is

obscuring the view of the mountains with smoke.

               Some people are born never having seen

the veins lit red between their eyelids and

                                           everything else.

Can you envision a ball you’ve never seen?

          Only ever held? What’s the nature

of the orb in your mind if the real thing was

                                         never there? 

The story I’m telling is the one about the man

who had a daughter and whose wife died in

                                               child birth. 

He sailed her to an island where he raised her

                                  all alone, 

         and taught her that they were the only

two people on earth, that the island was the only patch

            of land for miles and miles. When he died

            she was all that was left, and when she closed

her eyes all she saw was the widemouthed sprawl

                                 of an empty plate. 

about the author // Joshua Lillie