Manual Soul Transmigration
Take your face by the bridge of your nose and make a crease from your chin to your eyes so your skin touches skin it has never touched before. Use the back of your hands. Try to pull. You will feel chapped and tongue-touched. The ceiling will move like the riptide. You will feel it.
Peel back your nostrils and leave them coiled in small piles of dough. Let them rest on your forehead. They will feel tanned and treated like a pelt or hide of an animal. This is when you can see creatures or something like a hairbrush in shadows.
Lather your sides until you're soft and flexible. Shave yourself until you see your ghost. Use a razor--or a rake. This will hurt. It will feel good.
You will be hungry. You might suffer. You will think that you might die from the prolonged lack of food--that you have anorexia and have lost your appetite and the ability to eat. This is natural. It's all in your head.
Stick your fingers down your throat. You won't feel anything because you're not even there--like the air, the sky, and space. Move your fingers in wide revolutions. Pretend your hand is an umbrella then give yourself a chance to swallow. Cough and spit phlegm. Lick your knuckles, smell them, and wipe the saliva against your ribs. Picture a xylophone. Taste yourself and feel inspired.
Wrap your arms around yourself and feel how much you've shrunk. You can wince. You should.
Then find a spike and slam your skull. Train tracks usually work well. Brush the rust against the ridges of your brain so your toe bones pop. It's just like pressing a button. This will happen faster if you arch your back as you hack your head. Let your jaw chatter like a dolphin's. Try to think about butterflies.
A window will open and you will see clouds. You will want to start counting them and the heart-shaped seeds sprouting inside them. Move from one body to another body to a new one. Try on other eyeballs for size. Their shapes and flavours will remind you of Virginia pears. It will be dark when your lids open. It is always hard waking up.
Leave yourself nice and hooked, hanging. Let your pants hang open and kick off your shoes.
If you feel like moving, pretend you're cement. Listen to the sound of sipping through a straw. Touch your neck. Grope your mouth. Fill your lungs and yawn.
Today, you can watch television.
Adam Moorad's writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in 3 A.M. Magazine, H_ngm_n, Johnny America, PANK, Storyglossia, and Underground Voices. He is the author of an ebook, The Nurse and The Patient (Pangur Ban Party, 2009). He lives in Brooklyn and works in publishing. Visit him at: adamadamadamadamadam.blogspot.com.