THOMAS J. THOMAS

THE MARCH OF THE TEN THOUSAND

My kidnappers make me nervous

but I like watching everybody twist and contort around the beat

without deviating from it. The little protests
within the metronome implied by the fits

and bits of the synthesized drums above.
I always thought a built-in barometer

would prove more handy than the SunDial clock/com chip
I was born with. The weather

being a more assertive background
than the passing of time and thus a more clear

and more or less present danger. We spent the summer

mostly underground because
of the radionuclides all over the entire city. I was hiding

in a bathroom stall when they found me
trying not to breathe, with my feet tucked above the rim,

talking that gibberish they call a language

in matching jackets. It wasn’t until later
after the Movement was chronicled and no longer moving

that I thought I might see you

walking toward me like a dream wearing
your shirt for pants and a brown paper bag for a face

again. I never asked to be kidnapped.

It just sort of happened

because my family historically held the key to the margin of error
at the polls. Actually

one half of one continually
regenerating code. Which I won’t inherit

until my 33rd x-day, so until then
I take to these establishments of light and color

and sound and sweat with the mercenaries on permanent R&R.

They purchased me years ago as a low-risk investment
in a bargaining chip

against a nation-state target that has since ceased to function as such.

The multinational that hired them is also long gone

so they reenact the situation
of the night of my disappearance, over and over

as if that might locate the exact second the context for their actions

fell apart like a suit of armor.
As if the exact second thus located

might be recontextualized and run in reverse. It’s absurd. First

I hawk stims in the parking lot
then I head inside

to get a drink of potassium iodide and scope the clientele;
I notice the kidnappers retroactively in my perimeter

after running into you in that ridiculous outfit telling me

you were serious, that if I valued my place in this world
I better slip out of it

through the back door into the backseat of the unmarked car
repurposed for the Resistance.

This is all part of the reenactment with everybody
playing themselves

except you, swiftly executed the first time and every time

thereafter played by a humanoid proxy,

one shot to the head two to the chest as
I make my way through the crowd to the safe haven

of a stall graffitied with radioactive liquishit splatters
imagining the shirt coming unbundled around your loins

as the brown paper bag hits the floor,
the blood and pieces of brain spilling out like groceries

and the miscellaneous clientele dancing like they mean it

in and out of the violently irreconcilable differences

of the Movement and the Resistance. Everybody
doing their part

playing their part
regardless of audience or stage seized into momentary

reluctant being
by a set of unexpired orders. I act and wait

for my next x-day or for the rumors to solidify
into empirical fact and for you to return, cloned

down to the cuticle
except for the slight asymmetry in the face implied

by the brown paper bag

I’ll pretend not to notice
the same way I ignore the tick tick tick

of my congenital SunDial and the com continually open and
receiving the unending buzz of no response,

its volume spiking on occasion
after inserting the stim tabs into the jacks in our forearms

then sucking down the menthol drops that channel

the explosive dispersion from our coccyx
to the tops of our heads.