The Abbreviated Kafka

Kafka is born. You can trace his origins back to smoke, the stillness of staircases, the pallid sleep of bloodless dreamers. As a child Kafka visits Florentine dyers to concoct a different race of blue. A blue stolen from hemophiliacs, the domes of ancient czars. He sips from vats of color, each of his teeth a masterpiece. 

Kafka does not marry. Instead, Kafka falls in love with an unpublished maid, the ripple of her spine like a creature breaching the surface of a tranquil sea. He feels the doves of her hands on his skin, his body a hunger mansion of malachite, verdigris, buckthorn, nettle.

Kafka goes on vacation. Darkness gathers at the railway station, preparing to board. It brings eyeliner, keys, a list of demands. Kafka visits all the theme parks of the moon, collecting tiny spoons.

Kafka goes on strike. I am only a piston in the night machine, he writes. Kafkas of the world unite.